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Apple 'Messed Up' with Retail Store Cutbacks, Denies Mass Layoffs

macnerd93 said:
He won't rein long :D With a cockup like this. To me, it looks totally unprofessional, if the Apple VP team went into any Currys, PCWorld or Comet they could see his god awful retail experience first hand.
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If? :confused:

You would like to think Apple's HR had done at least some due diligence on Browett before throwing its lot in with him.
 
With Apple, you buy into a system regardless of an Apple store or authorised reseller. When you have a problem you can make an apointment at an apple store and hopefully come to a resolution which is great. Little impact for a happy product ownership. Applecare obviously extends this happy experience.

All I can say about the conpany (no mispelling) that Browett worked for is still low in my customer experience. If you buy from them you have to sure you want it as if you open it (High Street sales) then return is impossible. I would only buy from them if my life depended upon it. If Apple goes the same way then I will will move elsewhere.

Maybe the self service app available upon the iPhone was part of this formula to cut staff. I have to admit that recently staff at Apple stores in have been at a premium.

One last comment, Steve knew what he wanted. Browett, the Joker?!
 
Michael Jordan said:
'we're gonna double down on security' haha, seems like you can say this sentence on every article!
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That is hardly surprising for articles on a site called MacRUMORS. Every rumor is by definition something that escaped security.

Often one has pedel hard to just to stand still, this likely applies to secrecy. The larger Apple gets, the more attention it gets, the more security you need to just stand still.

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peterh988 said:
My experience with this in PC World. I bought a small item, about £12, and was immediately offered an extended warranty. I declined before she got the first sentence out. Of course, that wasn't the end of it, "Just let me tell you about it"

"No point, I'm not buying an extended warranty on a £12 item, no matter how good it is" I said.

At this point, I've started walking from the display to the checkout, and now she's following me, "You must let me tell you, i'll get in trouble otherwise"

"Really not interested" I said at this point, giving up all pretences of being polite.

By now i'm queing at the checkout, so i'm a captive audience, and she starts again. This time i literally give her the 'talk to the hand' hold my hand up between her face and mine, and looking away. I hear her finish with "so shall I arrange that for you?" before I just chuckle pay and walk off.
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The best thing to do would be to pretend to be interested so the assistant gets his check mark but do it such an exaggerated way that everybody listening would clearly know it was just for show.
 
senior vice president of retail, John Browett ----

You sir are a total douche! You made change for the sake of change and no doubt are fixated on money saving for no reason other then to try and look like you were doing something. Now go and please get fired!
 
parish said:
You're more patient/tolerant than me. I had a similar experience - might have been PC World, can't remember - but when I realised the numpty didn't understand 'NO' I put the item I was buying in their hand and said, "There you go. Not only have you failed to sell me the warranty, you've just lost the sale of this" and walked out.
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No, see, I feel sorry for them when it's obvious they aren't the ones making the decision (the clerk there outright said she'd get in trouble for not giving the spiel. At that point she cares more what her boss is going to do than you not buying. Her boss who is making her do that should be the one to not care you're not buying. Of course, since he's a crappy boss implementing crappy policies and obviously has no clue on good customer service he'll blame her instead).

I almost told a manager off one time cause of that and I really wish I had (Borders). It was obvious she was passively aggressively chiding the cashier for not getting me to sign up for their card (the cashier asked, I said no. The cashier, like some one who knows good customer service, let it be at that. Her manager comes up from behind her and asks me if the clerk had asked me if I signed up for a card. I literally said, "Yes, she did ask and I said no". At this point I'm figuring she's just checking to make sure the clerk is asking. No, apparently me telling her I wasn't interested meant the cashier didn't do her job and didn't ask hard enough cause the manager started to proceed to demonstrate to the cashier how to get me to sign up by starting to try to sell me the card and when I would say not interested try to keep telling me that it had other benefits. She wouldn't stop until I literally growled at her that I was not interested and gave her the look of death.. because I was on the verge of telling off the manager on how crappy a manager I thought she was on various levels - for example passively aggressively chiding her employee in front of the customer, cause it was obvious she was doing that partly to tell the employee she wasn't doing it right. I regretted after I held my tongue not telling the manager off, but I hate confrontation and only Best Buy has managed to get me not to hold my tongue. I'm sure the employee was silently grinning when instead of a happy customer the manager got a pissed off customer. I made sure to tell the cashier afterwards I appreciated the cashier's help).
 
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mnemonix said:
I don't know about the US, but for me, he typifies everything that's wrong with management in the UK, very ordinary people with a massively inflated sense of their own importance and worth, who know the cost everything and the value of nothing (excepting their own outrageous salaries of course).

If it can't be outsourced entirely, then screw the domestic employees in every way you can, then screw the customer for what its worth as well if you can do it with misleading advertising and products made down to lowest price.

Its why this country has so little industry, products or services worth a damn not as is often said, anything to do with the unions or working classes.

I'm sure it's generally no different in the US, but I thought a more enlightened outlook is what set Apple apart.
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The USA is the same, if not worse. I'm still trying to figure out who learned it from who.
 
weckart said:
If? :confused:

You would like to think Apple's HR had done at least some due diligence on Browett before throwing its lot in with him.
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AppleInsider has an article about this. According to the article,

The report also noted that Browett said Apple's retail outlets need to "learn to 'run leaner' in all areas, even if the customer experience is compromised."
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I understand that Apple's a business & a business' #1 goal is to maximize profits, but IMHO, it shouldn't be at the expense of customer experience. It might bring better profits in the short term, but people may not want to come in anymore if the experience is too bad. If that happens, eventually, you'll lose a lot of profits. Plus, the article goes on to say

During fiscal 2011, Apple's retail stores generated $14.1 billion in revenue and $3.1 billion in profits.
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Obviously, Apple is doing well. Extremely well. It's not like they're losing money and this will help them break even.

One of the best things about the Apple Store was how helpful the staff was. While a number of people on these forums have had bad experience, I've never had a bad experience personally. Pretty much all the times I've been to an Apple Store, it's been crowded. If I had my way, the stores would be even bigger. Then there would be more space to maneuver, plus you could fit in more customers meaning more sales.
 
Jimrod said:
This seems to be a problem of many big companies, they hire guys who fail elsewhere but have a good CV of big names. It doesn't matter if they suck they seem to ignore it and go "ooh, he worked for Tesco, Dixon's, big names! He has a Cambridge degree... Shiny... Hire him!" These unflushable turd directors float from one big company to another leaving them in a worse state than when they started yet no-one hiring seems to notice it.
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Peter principal. Worst part is that these sociopaths make lateral moves and get paid off to leave after badly screwing things. They should be filtered out of the workforce so there is room to elevate those actually doing well at their jobs.
 
What? The man from Tesco and Dixons wanted to wield his little chopping axe? Surely not? Oh yeah, I remember now how hard it was to get served in Dixons way back when.

This type of goolish cost cutting is one of the fundamental shortcomings of too many businesses. I seriously couldnt believe Apple needed to follow suit. So unlike Apple, I was never sure he'd be the right fit for Apple.

I give him 7 days.
 
parish said:
You're more patient/tolerant than me. I had a similar experience - might have been PC World, can't remember - but when I realised the numpty didn't understand 'NO' I put the item I was buying in their hand and said, "There you go. Not only have you failed to sell me the warranty, you've just lost the sale of this" and walked out.
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Upper management is blind to such events. I worked for Kensington tech support but our HR and management was Daytimers inc (same parent, outsourced the support to our location). I lost my job making a customer happy with Kensington honesty policies which were against Daytimers policy of risking loss of customer by admitting error. There's too much disconnection between the buttnuts making the policies and the actual customers and actual workforce.

The bigger a corporation gets, the more common this is. Not enough people do what you did. It's hard on the sales person but these events can add up and then the reports from retail locations are sent to corporate... Which likely ignores them, because obviously retail "isn't following the procedure right" because upper management can never be wrong.

I'd love to have a job where the corporate culture is that I'm never in the wrong and I get paid extra to leave after screwing things up. So far I've only ever been in the bottom feeding end where you're always inferior to management, especially when clients/customers like you more than they like your boss.
 
dysamoria said:
Peter principal. Worst part is that these sociopaths make lateral moves and get paid off to leave after badly screwing things. They should be filtered out of the workforce so there is room to elevate those actually doing well at their jobs.
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Who is going to do the filtering? Their equally incompetent peers and bosses? I just cannot see turkeys voting for Christmas.
 
weckart said:
Who is going to do the filtering? Their equally incompetent peers and bosses? I just cannot see turkeys voting for Christmas.
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Exactly right. If there's no smarter entity at the top, the thing just runs itself out and all the upper management retire or move to more of the same elsewhere. It's a broken system that looks fine to those at the top. The "elite" are too isolated from the "common people."
 
As one of the very few who said 'give the bloke a chance', I think Apple now has to let him go, even if it costs them millions.

I don't have a problem with him making the mistake; he came clean and they're fixing it. The problem I have is the reason he did it: to improve his profile inside Apple. That kind of attitude can spread very quickly, and before you know it the company will be reduced to a failing collection of competing fiefdoms.

He wasn't pulling for the team. He should go.
 
I'm really happy to see Apple responding to this issue. I don't know if they laid off employees or not, but at least it wasn't a mass layoff like people were saying. I really wanna work there.
 
apolloa said:
senior vice president of retail, John Browett ----

You sir are a total douche! You made change for the sake of change and no doubt are fixated on money saving for no reason other then to try and look like you were doing something. Now go and please get fired!
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This is MBA, business major douche 101. Soon as you take over, you start cutting heads to send a message to the low level peons; "better buy into my tyrannical vision or get the axe"

It also gives the impression of greater short term success to upper management, which is really a brown nose move.

It certainly isn't leadership.

The minute an Apple employee ever tries to "overcome my objections" and tries to "service me through selling", I'm done with Apple stores for good.
 
JHankwitz said:
OMG! Apple made a mistake.
This certainly has to be the start of the end of Apple. :rolleyes:
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Lol, getting hysterical aren't you.

The mistake put some good devoted staff out of work, but hey, it's Apple, so its alllllll good. :rolleyesevenmore:
 
Well we gave you a decent Olympics - now the bad, "John Browett". Give him a bit more time and he will rename the stores "Apple Digital" the few staff in store will be "product clueless" and the companies reputation will as popular as the banking industry. That's certainly his CV here in the UK. Sad that so many of these people always seem to land on their feet as they lurch from one corporate disaster to another.
 
The past several times I've been in an Apple store it has appeared to me they were severely overstaffed...more staff than customers.

But it has been during weekdays. So maybe the staffing level was correct but the scheduling sucked.
 
Open memo to Tim Cook:

Tim,

What is Dixon's reputation for Customer Service?

Who was the Executive Leader associated with achieving that reputation?

How well aligned is that reputation with your vision for the Apple retail experience?

Does Browett have Apple dna in his core?

If mis-aligned, can you trust this person to build upon what has already been achieved OR will he likely damage the Apple Store experience?

Did you make a big mistake in hiring John Browett?

If so, correct the mistake quickly - before serious damage is done.
 

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