One-on-Three
As a former Store Manager for an Apple Store, I have to say that I find the fact that all Apple Stores have been quietly shedding talented employees, more pointedly Creatives, rather disturbing.
Throughout my tenure at Apple Retail, prior to advancing my career beyond Apple, and in my personal meetings with Ron Johnson, it was always stated that the One-to-One program was at the core foundation for the Apple Store. This was due to evolution, as the One-to-One program, or ProCare as it was originally called, was not in place for the first few years of Apple Retail. The stores became a great place for switchers. It was the crazy affordable training programs that largely created buzz and contributed to the extreme success of the retail stores.
However, the training program is inherently flawed. There is no consequence for not showing up for your scheduled appointments. Up until this change, that meant there was a Full Time, $30,000-$35,000, Creative waiting for you, with nothing else to do. During the spring time, when weather is warming up, it is uncommon for an Apple Store to experience as high as a 30% No-Show rate. Talk about lost productivity. Rather than changing the No-Show policy of the program, they made these changes, which seem to be in direct contradiction to the foundation that the program was original designed. Open project with 1 creative supervising multiple customers? More than one person in a training session? What about different learning levels, speeds, goals, capabilities? How does this support the "Ultimate Customer Experience." The truth is, this decision was made out of pure financial necessity. When I left Apple Retail last summer, I was running a $50 million store with approximately 150 employees. That same store now has less than 70 employees. Anyone hear about these job losses at Apple? Nope. Best kept secret. Of course the economy is down, and sales are down, and retail stores should streamline and shrink to accommodate. The current line of "investing in the downturn", however, is just a bunch of crap and a complete marketing line to steer away the reality.
The One-to-One program was altered because if you change the program from a one-to-one to a one-to-many situation and a few customers don't show up, you get to use less employees to serve the same number of customers.
On a different note, I find the fact that you can no longer simply walk into an Apple Store to purchase a training membership rather insulting. For a commission free atmosphere, they are awfully hell bent on pushing the 60% AppleCare attach rate, 30% MobileMe attach rate, and 25% One-to-One attach rate. How do you think the customers feel about being put in the position to have to decide when they purchase a computer, and only then, if they want to enroll in the training. Seems pretty pushy to me. What ever happened to letting those, who are unsure of training, to take the computer home play with it, and decide if they need it. Or better yet, offer them 1 free training session to get a taste of the program. But then again, that would cost money, and that clearly isn't the way they are going any more.
Just my 15 cents from someone who has first hand experience.