Genius Bar: The Apple Store’s Fading Legacy?
Let’s rewind to the summer of 2002. Apple’s retail initiative has just passed its first anniversary and, in September, opens its 50th store in the US. The original iPod is mere months old and, largely, is a curiosity still looking for the insane success it would soon become. Apple has just shipped Mac OS X 10.2 “Jaguar” and the new hotness is the iMac G4.
Genesis of the Genius Bar
The Genius Bar was originally conceived as a one-stop shop for customers to get training, troubleshooting, and repair for their Macs. At just fifty Apple Stores, Apple only needed the four or five hundred Geniuses across the country and was willing to splurge a little on salaries to make for a stellar experience. Many of the first two generations of Mac Geniuses came from inside Apple, including myself. This created a pool of employees who were already instilled with the levels of service and caring that Apple demands.
Early on, working the Genius Bar was very nearly a sacred duty. We all felt the weight of the customer experience. We knew that every word we uttered, every action we took could have a tremendous effect on whether this customer would remain a loyal Apple customer. We spent considerable time evaluating, re-evaluating, and re-re-evaluating the tiniest of tiny details that would help or hinder interactions. Stores discussed best practices amongst each other, quickly getting new ideas into varied settings and deciding when and where to employ various tactics, arrangements, and logistics. There was but one focus: Customer Satisfaction. Nothing else mattered. At all. No schemes, no run-arounds, no qualms about exceptions. While other divisions of Apple had stringent requirements for replacing computers, our directive was far more lenient.
How The iPod Changed the Genius Bar…
The shape of today’s Genius Bar has more to do with the iPod than anything else. Whereas a Mac Genius in 2002 spent most of his time, logically, working with Macintoshes, the Mac Genius of 2006 spends far more time staring blankly at iPods. The 2002 Model Genius spent quality time with two, maybe three customers per hour. In 2006, he crams six or eight iPods into an hour and commonly spends an entire day handling only shiny white music players while a co-worker helps the Macintosh customers. In 2002, the Genius helped mostly level-headed, professional adults. Later, he helps mostly tantrum-throwing children and teenagers.
iPods are decidedly simple devices, and no one within Apple does component-level repair on the darned things. Whether you mail it in to Apple for repair or you take it to Apple, you get a new iPod in return. Geniuses aren’t in the back room tearing iPods apart and replacing screens and drives. The handling of iPods is completely and utterly opposed to the handling of Macs. When assisting a Macintosh customer, the Genius uses an often complicated decision tree to reach a solution. Do you just need training, or does your Mac need some work done? If it needs work, will the problem require leaving the computer at the store for a few days? If it does need to stay, the Genius must thoroughly document all steps large and small, as he will likely not be the Genius actually performing the repair.
For iPod customers, the possible outcomes are much less diverse. If it’s broken, he trots backstage and gets a new one for you. If it’s not, he doesn’t. Most of the interaction becomes paperwork, not training, troubleshooting, or repair.
…and How It Killed It
Apple hired a metric boatload of Mac Geniuses for their (say it with me now) training, troubleshooting, or repair. They hired imminently qualified and capable individuals to do this, and they paid them handsomely. A while later, this great new product came along and suddenly they were doing little more than pushing paperwork.
Well-paid, well-trained individuals don’t often handle reductions in duties very well. They want to grow intellectually. They want to grow professionally. They want to show their skill to their co-workers and customers. They want to be heroes. Instead, they’re processing paperwork. Can you guess what their reaction is? I can.
They leave. In droves. Among the many negatives that cropped up, they all have different camel-breaking straws. Some are refused long-promised promotions, others have critical blow-outs with customers, and yet others simply burn out. But the whole story is that they were hired for a fairly important job, one that they performed well for nearly two years, and then were asked to stoop to paper-pushing and baby-sitting.
The experience left and, sadly, was not replaced by equal talent. As the well-paid Geniuses left, Apple Retail took the opportunity to save on payroll by hiring replacement Geniuses at deeply discounted rates. Watch out for falling prices, as they say, and that meant watching out for falling satisfaction levels.
Can It Be Fixed?
Apple faces important questions, chief of which is whether they can fix the Genius Bar. The Bars have become magnets of negativity both for the customers and for the Geniuses themselves, largely because of tremendously increased waiting times and decreased quality time with the Genius. Treating the Genius Bar as a cattle mill of customers negatively impacts the Geniuses, as the phenomenal number of faces they help become impersonal and uncaring. Waiting longer leads to customers being more curt when their turn arrives. When a Mac Genius is processing iPod Warranty claims, he’s ignoring a part of his job that is so important that it’s in his title.
The Mac.
Maybe Apple will remember this, some day. Until that day, the Genius Bar will continue to suffer. As it stands, the Geniuses spend an inordinate amount of time dealing with iPods, a task that doesn’t really need the attention of a Genius. Anyone can plug in a serial number, enter a note, and hand the customer a new iPod. Not just anyone can help a customer set up WDS or troubleshoot audio sync issues in Final Cut.
Apple should return the Mac Genius’s focus to the Mac, where it belongs, and it should start paying the Geniuses rates that correspond to that renewed focus, brining in new Geniuses with significant work experience. They should hire “iPod Geniuses” to handle iPods, or institute a different support structure altogether for iPods. Regardless of the actual mechanism, the focus of the Mac Genius must be, as their name explicitly states, the Mac.