“Big” changes rumored for Apple’s approach to customer service at the retail level are bound to impress legions of the company’s newest consumers while raising the enmity of long-time customers and customer service employees alike.
New guidelines for handling on-site service requests and repair jobs at Apple’s retail stores are coming down the pike, according to a report Wednesday, as well as to communiques rumored to have recently hit Apple’s internal Retail News Network.
The gist of the company line is that walk-in customer service issues will soon be addressed in tandem with those presented by customers already holding scheduled Genius Bar appointments, and that as many repairs as can be done so will be queued for overnight turnaround — all without the hiring of additional staff to meet what is clearly growing retail traffic and demand for service interactions.
Not only will retail staff be expected to possess Genius-level understanding of the product line, they will also exhibit model habits of efficiency and productivity, according to the company’s plan.
Apple has led the major computer technology retailers in customer satisfaction by a wide margin over the past few years and was the only computer and electronics company to rank in the top 20 of all businesses rated in the latest Businessweek customer service satisfaction survey.
Clearly, customer service has been an important part of Apple’s growth strategy and the new “great leap forward” may well usher in another phase of winning consumers over to the taste of its Kool Aid.
In fact, the purported changes seem designed to impress the newest Apple customers most of all.
Who won’t be stoked to walk into a store with a mobile device problem and be greeted by an eager young person holding an iPod Touch loaded with MobileGenius software, saying, “how can I help you fix your problem today?” The fact those customers will also be encouraged to buy a $30 peripheral or accessory will seem like no big deal and that revenue will flow effortlessly to the company’s bottom line.
Those long familiar with Apple — as well as the personnel upon whom the new regime and responsibilities are destined to fall — are likely to become wistful for the days when Apple wasn’t such a well-known entity, however.
Personal attention enjoyed in the past — on both sides of the customer service transaction — will give way to a realization that the cool little company with a less than 10% market share is gone forever. And there may be a longing for the days when there weren’t so many non-geniuses out there who can’t understand why their their phones don’t work or what the hell a spinning beach ball has to do with insufficient RAM.
