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The $5,000-Per-Square-Foot Customer Experience: How To Copy The Apple Store's Magic Formula

This article is more than 7 years old.

The Apple Store customer experience helps drive jaw-dropping in-store sales of nearly $5,000 per square foot, which was previously the territory only of luxury retailers like Tiffany. But there's no reason Apple should have all the fun (or all the revenue). You can emulate Apple’s success in retailing by using the same principles of great customer service and customer experience.

Be sure to do this with subtlety and care, making sure to adapt the Apple Store approach to the specifics and tone of your business. And be prepared to be very, very pleased by the results.

Apple Store, Suburban Square (PA) • © Micah Solomon micah@micahsolomon.com

1. Get the first moments right with every customer. The first moments a customer spends with a business can disproportionately affect how the customer remembers the entire encounter. Because of the way the human memory works, if you get off to a bad start with a customer, it’s hard to recover, while if you do a spectacular job in those first few minutes, it’s a lot easier to coast to the finish line. Apple therefore strives to make sure your first few moments in the store go well. There are two discrete elements to Apple’s success here: Most visibly, they post friendly, enthusiastic, knowledgeable greeters near the front doors, whose only task is to shepherd you where you need to go and help you avoid the potential disorientation and stress that could otherwise be induced by the bustling store environment. To take this a step further (or backward), they encourage you, well before you get to the store, to assist in creating a successful entrance experience by pre-scheduling your visit via the Apple Store App. If Apple succeeds in getting you to do this, it means that when you get to the Apple Store the greeter can even more easily get you to where you want to go.

(Is your business getting the crucial first moments right with your customers? Everything, from the moment they park their car or lock their bike needs to be thought through and designed impeccably. Online and on mobile as well, initial encounters with your brand should be well thought out to be intuitive for the first-time visitor.)

2. Respect your customers’ time. The Apple Store app and Apple online scheduling options not only help reduce the initial stress of arriving at the Apple Store, they ensure that a customer’s visit makes efficient, productive use of the customer’s time. If a customer wants help with diagnosing a flicker in their MacBook Pro screen and only has 45 minutes to spend on the errand, there’s a good chance they can make it in and out of the store within that time frame.

(Does your business respect your customers’ time? Customers today are busy people, often working unusual schedules, and they appreciate those businesses that treat their time with consideration.)

3. Hire employees who have the right personality traits for customer service. In almost any electronics retail store, the people selected for employment are enthusiastic about technology, and the fanboys and fangirls who work at the Apple Store are no different. But Apple doesn’t think this is enough. They strive to hire prospective employees who are also good, empathetic listeners. The reality is that in this age of consumer skepticism, a business is not going to succeed by giving a hard sell. Providing great customer service, in fact, is as close to selling as the Apple Stores get.

(Are you systematically hiring the employees who are most likely to succeed with customers? Here is an article of mine describing in detail how to hire customer-facing employees for optimal customer service success. Don’t think of customer service as only a support function. With today’s aversion among customers to “being sold,” customer service skills are an essential part of selling your products now and maintaining a reputation that will drive future sales as well.)

4. Train and train again. It’s not enough to hire employees with potential. Success with customers requires top-notch customer service training. This should start at orientation and continue at intervals throughout the employee’s career with the company. To take just one Apple example, employees are trained, right at orientation, that a successful customer engagement depends on deploying Apple’s systematic process (APPLE: Approach-Probe-Present-Listen-End), and are trained in how to tailor this formula to the individual customer. An employee can’t be expected to wing it here; training and re-training are what’s called for.

 (Does your business invest in customer service training? It’s essential, from employee onboarding through periodic reinforcement to larger-scale training workshops. As a customer service speaker, trainer, and consultant, this is where I risk sounding self-serving, but I would stand behind the importance of methodical, repeated customer service training even if I had no dog in the fight here.)

5. Streamline. One of the great innovations of the Apple Store is its innovative and unwavering devotion to streamlining: removing everything that could get in the way of a customer’s engagement with Apple’s products and its helpful employees. In an Apple store, there’s a notable absence of cash registers, paper receipts, or anything else to clutter up the experience. This isn’t just an aesthetic choice; it provides clarity of mind for customers and employees about the purpose of the Apple Store customer experience. So, once a purchase decision has been made, or a repair is determined to be required, there’s nothing in the way of making the purchase or repair happen: no forms in duplicate, no waiting in line for a single cash register, etc.

(Are you streamlining the customer experience at your company? Doing so is almost certain to pay off in improved customer satisfaction–and, if it makes purchases easier, in immediate financial results as well.)

Although these five concepts are straightforward, implementing them in a way that works for your business is where your understanding of what makes your business unique must come into play. I’m not trying to turn you into a cookie cutter replica of an Apple Store, or of any other successful business. The goal is to keep “you” you, but in a way that gets the non-you out of the way of delighting your customers. Apple actually invented almost none of these concepts; they borrowed them most visibly in fact from the hospitality methods of great 5 star hotels. But by putting them into play in a very Apple way, they now seem to be an organic part of the Apple brand.  If you in turn deploy effectively, the results should seem just as naturally a part of your business.

Micah Solomon is a customer experience consultant and customer service thought leader, keynote speaker, customer service trainer, and bestselling author. Click for two free chapters from Micah's latest book, The Heart of Hospitality, or click here to email him directly for an immediate response, or give him a call at (484)343-5881.