The email, reproduced at the employee’s website, describes a devolution of the internal organization and treatment of Apple Retail employees in recent years. The author claims that Apple’s “CORE” training, which stresses individual customer attention, has become almost completely supplanted by the traditional bottom-line approach that other electronic retailers, such as Best Buy, are known for.
“Due to the overwhelming number of appointments per employee and the continued push to open more and more active queues [available slots to aid customers at the Genius Bar], most interactions are now completely transactional, rather than transformational. We are lucky if we have time to ask the customer their name, nevertheless truly get to dig deeply into their lives and their issues, and further repair their relationships with both Apple and the Apple brand,” the author states.
While the email itself remains unsubstantiated opinion, the points raised by the author are mirrored in other recent complaints from Apple Retail staff, including a thus far unsuccessful attempt to unionize. These feelings, coupled with changes to the way Apple handles customer repairs paint an interesting picture of the world’s most successful retail operation and its struggles as it enters maturity.
In the view of at least one employee, however, “Apple is no longer about enriching lives, it is about enriching pocketbooks.”