How to be an Apple Genius

Hamster

Hamster

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Gizmodo got their hands on a training manual...

The Genius Training Student Workbook we received is the company's most up to date, we're told, and runs a bizarre gamut of Apple Dos and Don'ts, down to specific words you're not allowed to use, and lessons on how to identify and capitalize on human emotions. The manual could easily serve as the Humanity 101 textbook for a robot university, but at Apple, it's an exhaustive manual to understanding customers and making them happy. Sales, it turns out, take a backseat to good vibes—almost the entire volume is dedicated to empathizing, consoling, cheering up, and correcting various Genius Bar confrontations. The assumption, it'd seem, is that a happy customer is a customer who will buy things. And no matter how much the Apple Store comes off as some kind of smiling likeminded computer commune, it's still a store above all—just one that puts an enormous amount of effort behind getting inside your head.
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http://gizmodo.com/5938323
 
Gives a new meaning to the cult of mac.
 
Yeah. The way they "sympathise" and then tell you this story/lie of how they had to make the same choice :sick: And the whole crap thing about never saying a system crashed but that it "stopped responding" and the device is not running hot...just a bit "warm".

Makes me wanna go to one of the apple stores just to give them grieve and physically harming them.

But their sales figures show that it works so I guess all is fair in love and retail, no?
 
Fudzy said:
Creepy, I wonder if the local reps have to go through that?
Click to expand...

A company like Apple surely won't let the RSA stores operate differently to the USA ones would they?
 
Hamster said:
A company like Apple surely won't let the RSA stores operate differently to the USA ones would they?
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Why not, they're not actual Apple employees are they. That might change if Apple ever graces our shores. ;)
 
The local SA stores are not associated directly with Apple inc, so that manual wouldn't apply.

This doesn't surprise me though, did you know that in Apple stores proper, not the authorised resellers, etc, they purposely angle the screen of their laptops at 70 degrees so that when you as the customer walk in and notice this oddity, you are likely to "correct it" by altering the screen angle so that you can view the screen more comfortably. This will hopefully make you start to play with the computer and end up buying it, the reasoning behind this is that Apple products sell themselves but need you to interact with it in order to make that sale.
 
koeksGHT said:
Its just consumer "buttering" really. Apple seems more marketing than actual product.
Click to expand...

I agree, they wouldn't be where they are without marketing, specifically mass appeal. Doesn't work for them all the time of course.
 
ponder said:
*cough* Verimark, Homemark *cough*
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Those guys aren't particularly good at marketing. I still don't want any of their products even though adverts are shoved down my throat at every ad break.
 
This won't work over here as the average SA equivalent is still considering whether losing the prehensile tail & trying to walk on all fours is a good thing or not.

Personally I prefer substance over marketing fluff when deciding on which gadgets to spend my money on. 'Ooh shiny!' gets my attention like anyone else, but false and calculating sales people stand my hair on end.

The article does however provide interesting insight into the psychology of the cult.
 
Wonder if you can get hold of the full manual. Would be an interesting read. I just started reading Inside Apple, will report back later.
 
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