Apple's 'experiential retail' success lies in improving a customer's life claims Angela Ah...
Apple is excelling at retail because it has different aims to other stores, retail chief Angela Ahrendts advised in an interview, with the company bucking the trend of store closures though "experiential retail" and providing education to the customer, rather than just selling merchandise.
Angela Ahrendts (right) with Apple CEO Tim Cook
Speaking at the former Carnegie Library in Washington, DC, Ahrendts advises Apple is "now opening fewer, larger stores so that you can get the full experience of everything that's Apple." The aim is to build long-term customer relationships in its stores, and it can only do so by showing as much as it can of its products and services to customers.
The philosophy continues what founder and CEO Steve Jobs envisioned for the company's stores, Ahrendts told Vogue Business. "Steve told the teams when he opened retail 18 years ago, 'Your job is not to sell, your job is to enrich their lives and always through the lens of education,'" Ahrendts noted.
The push towards providing a place to meet rather than to sell is important, according to the retail head, advising "I think as humans we still need gathering places, and when you are serving digital natives, the thing they long for more than anything is human connection. Eye contact."
Apple's offering of non-sales elements in its stores, its Today at Apple events that ranges from classes to concerts referred to as "experimental retail," is being adopted by others. Urban Outfitters is noted to have three "Space" stores where it hosts gigs and workshops, whole the Reel Mall in Shanghai offers carpentry and jewelry-making classes.
Ahrendts has seen these elements crop up elsewhere, highlighting efforts by Soho House and CitizenM with praise. "They have filled this huge niche, a combination of experience and human connection."
As a major retail presence around the world, Ahrendts advised of the use of technology to improve the retail experience. In stores, there are thousands of beacons used to connect with the Apple Store app on iPhones, welcoming customers while allowing for purchasing without going through the cash register"
"As we renovate every store we update all the technology," it is advised. "We don't want to be gimmicky, but stores need to become living, breathing spaces, not just two-dimensional boxes."
Angela Ahrendts (right) with Apple CEO Tim Cook
Speaking at the former Carnegie Library in Washington, DC, Ahrendts advises Apple is "now opening fewer, larger stores so that you can get the full experience of everything that's Apple." The aim is to build long-term customer relationships in its stores, and it can only do so by showing as much as it can of its products and services to customers.
The philosophy continues what founder and CEO Steve Jobs envisioned for the company's stores, Ahrendts told Vogue Business. "Steve told the teams when he opened retail 18 years ago, 'Your job is not to sell, your job is to enrich their lives and always through the lens of education,'" Ahrendts noted.
The push towards providing a place to meet rather than to sell is important, according to the retail head, advising "I think as humans we still need gathering places, and when you are serving digital natives, the thing they long for more than anything is human connection. Eye contact."
Apple's offering of non-sales elements in its stores, its Today at Apple events that ranges from classes to concerts referred to as "experimental retail," is being adopted by others. Urban Outfitters is noted to have three "Space" stores where it hosts gigs and workshops, whole the Reel Mall in Shanghai offers carpentry and jewelry-making classes.
Ahrendts has seen these elements crop up elsewhere, highlighting efforts by Soho House and CitizenM with praise. "They have filled this huge niche, a combination of experience and human connection."
As a major retail presence around the world, Ahrendts advised of the use of technology to improve the retail experience. In stores, there are thousands of beacons used to connect with the Apple Store app on iPhones, welcoming customers while allowing for purchasing without going through the cash register"
"As we renovate every store we update all the technology," it is advised. "We don't want to be gimmicky, but stores need to become living, breathing spaces, not just two-dimensional boxes."
Comments
Don't get me wrong, I'm not so naive as to think that there wasn't some subliminal salesmanship going on there, but there wasn't even any attempt to say anything about the products themselves, just having fun with the girls. It was the salesmanship of simply using the products, not even talking about them at all.
https://www.apple.com/ca/leadership/
There's at least five highly placed women at Apple. That's not even counting the thousands of women in lower positions in the management tree.
She's done a lot.
Yes, the ability to pay via app is nice... except that it's not clear what products on the shelves you can actually do that with. It turns out that you can't do it for products that have serial-number barcodes that need to be registered... but the app doesn't make that clear. Last time I tried it, I just got a generic error message as if the barcode failed to scan.
When you have an issue, the Apple Store becomes a Kafka-esque nightmare. Even with an appointment, you'll be facing a wait. You'll have to somehow figure out who the one person in the store who can check you in might be, and where they are; there's no signage or particular uniform to make this clear. They'll shuffle you off to someone else, who will eventually take you to a chair at the crowded Genius Bar to wait for yet another person to triage you, and eventually you'll get yet another person to take care of your problem.
That is, if they have the parts on hand in the right box. I had a failed iPad Smart Keyboard. The store I went to was out of replacement keyboards in repair boxes in the back room, so I was told I'd have to come back in next week when they got more of them. That's a two-hour round trip for me. They couldn't ship the replacement to my home, because I'd come into the store to initiate the process. They couldn't give me one of the Smart Keyboards sitting on the display shelf, because it was in retail packaging, not repair packaging.
Days later, it was another multiple-person wait-some-more dance just to get the replacement part out of the back room.
It would've been a much more pleasant experience if there were a customer-service window and a queue, as in any other retail store. What Apple does today is just chaos.
That experience told me that Apple has lost its customer focus. Wasting hours of a customer's time when your product fails under warranty because it wasn't designed properly—the Smart Keyboard hinge is not durable enough and the wires break quickly in regular use—is not something I expected from Apple. Compounding it by having a replacement part sitting in clear sight on a shelf and refusing to make the replacement? There's no way that doesn't result in customer resentment.
Apple has become way too much about the form, and has completely forgotten about function, even in their stores.
The revamp of the online Apple store
The revamp of the existing stores
Running customer support.
If you have a problem with women who earn more money than you then just say so.
I agree with the commenter about this Apple retail boondoggle:
Why haven't your stores' workflows allowed for this Plan B? Repairs or replacement parts that cannot be completed during a visit SHOULD be completed "offline" or at a distance IF THAT IS THE CUSTOMER'S DESIRE!
(Get 'er done.)
That said, Apple stores are an essential direct communication channel between Apple and its user base. That alone is priceless.
If I have a criticism it is the same as for every other corporate store - the lack of personality. I would love to see Apple 'tune' their flagship stores to the cities where they operate. Clearly, in the case of Barcelona, a Gaudí inspiration would have given the PsG store a lot more personality.
In terms of staffing, I am divided. I prefer natural reactions and don't like the idea of 'programing' employees to react to certain situations. Employees should be able to adapt their approach to the needs of the person they have in front of them without falling back onto a 'script' and I have never been able to have a conversation with ANY Apple Store employee without another employee interrupting us to speak of something completely unrelated. That is very irritating. Unfortunately, most employees also run out of ideas if you turn up with a vintage machine and the last time I visited (Christmas) they gave me incorrect information.
I get the sensation that they are being asked to do too much at the same time.