I used to work at the Apple Store and it was quite a ride. No matter what the store will do, at least 50% will not be satisfied.
In regards to the checkout PDAs, honestly people loved them, they would say to me "this is so great! I don't have to wait in a line." I do understand about wanting to checkout really quickly, but I think thats just the way humans are. I once read a study about waiting. An airline landed and they decided to have it take 15 minutes for the bags to arrive in the baggage claim. For the first group, they had them walk a bit to get to the baggage claim, it took them about 10 minutes to walk there, and they waited for 5 minutes. For the second group, they put the baggage claim right near where the plane deboarded so it ended up taking a minute to get to the baggage claim. More people complained in the 2nd group about the wait then the first group, even though they waited the same amount of time.
Its the same thing for the genius bar, it used to be there was a line, but people complained about that, so they came up with the reservation process. Alot of people loved that, because they could book one from home and be seen when they come in. However, not everyone is going to know about the reservation process at first. If you're a new customer, and your ipod/computer doesn't work, your first reaction is to just go to the store. So then they have to wait in the "stand by" line, in case someone with a reservation doesn't show up. Those were the customers who always complained. That was the one thing I didn't like about the store. We had a specific way of doing things, and if someone came in with a different idea, it would create an imbalance and throw the store into a tizzy.
I was a specialist, but I knew how to trouble shoot some basic ipod/iphone stuff. I could tell if there was liquid damage, and would just do basic restores for customers, to act as a gatekeeper for the genius bar, so the geniuses could work on real technical issues. However, one time I was back there examining a customers iphone, I got bombarded with genius bar stand by'ers asking me to help them, in which i had to tell them to be patient, cuz I was a specialist, not a genius and not authorized/(TRAINED) to do that job.
I remember this one lady walks in with a pair of the ipod earbuds and demanded to see a genius. I asked her some questions to find out more about the earbuds. They weren't working and they were 3 years old. We had 3 geniuses in that day. One in the back repairing computers and calling customers to say their stuff is ready and 2 swamped with computer/iphone reservations (it was around lunchtime, and we were surrounded by alot of businesses, so they were busy). The geniuses basically told me that, she would either have to wait a long time, or to just buy a new pair of headphones (warranty for the earbuds are 1 year). She didn't like that and kept complaining and kept demanding to see a genius immediately. In the end, she waited 40 minutes just to have a genius tell her that she had to buy a new pair of earbuds because they were out of warranty.
I think the main issue is that the apple stores are designed to be a boutique, like a diamond store, but handle the traffic of a big box retailer, so there needs to be some adjustments. I hope the new shirt policy will ease the customers.
PS i hated when customers complained about a busy store. I hate when ppl do that in general (on things like yelp). Business is good! It means the store is doing well and doing something right. If it wasn't busy, that means no one would want to be there because the store isn't doing a good job.
WordOfBird
