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“I want you to tell me about that customer. What was their full name; what product did they buy; what did they want it for; what’s their job and what’s their favourite flavour of ice-cream?” And you think “What the f---?”

BI: How is it demanding? Apart from the death threats, you’re not describing anything that sounds that unusual.

A: Although you’d only sell so many products, you’re seeing well over 100 people in your shift. You’re going from one thing to another right away. You don’t have a moment to yourself, and there’s always someone watching you. You’ll be having a conversation with a customer and then afterwards a manager will come up to you and ask “What did you do wrong?” There are steps of service you must follow, the ways you do and don’t talk to customers. There’s constantly new training. Angela did a lot. She’d bring in new training, bring in ways you’d talk to customers.

BI: Is that stressful?

A: Yes. There’s always someone watching you. There’s always something you can do better. Every time a customer purchases something from you, they have the option to give feedback. A lot of the time it’ll be negative because of waiting times, because a product isn’t in stock, because we couldn’t fix an issue that was nothing to do with Apple, or they didn’t have an appointment. All of that feedback would be sent back to us. So every morning you’d go in, open up Retail Me and see your feedback. You’d usually get at least one a day. Not every customer leaves it. My overall Net Promoter score was 88 out of 100. But when you’re working at Apple, while they celebrate the good you do, they really focus on what you could do better, and what can we do to make this better. That’s a constant.

BI: Why is that unusual, though?

A: Well, one of the main things we did [in training] was ‘Fearless Feedback.’ This was something we were expected to do: we had to give either “positive specific” feedback or “negative specific” feedback. You couldn’t give any vague compliments like “you did really good today.” You had to say “You did really well today selling that iPad because you mentioned Apple Care one-to-one, and you managed to align with the customer’s needs.” Really specific feedback. You’d have to do that among your staff, to your peers. You’d be expected to do that at least once a day. Your manager would come up to you and say “what specific feedback have you given today?”

BI: To the person next to you in the store?

A: You would basically have to watch other people’s transactions and tell them what they did well and what they did badly.

BI: And you had to give one of those feedbacks per day?

A: At least one of those a day — you’d be asked what feedback you’d given today, and also what feedback you’d been given today.

BI: Isn’t that really weird? Working with these people every day, they become your friends.

A: They are your friends, and you have to give them this feedback!

BI: Do people ever say “Go F- yourself, I just sold an iPad!”

A: Well that’s the thing: you may have just sold a top spec iPad to a person, but I could come up to you — after asking if you mind having some feedback — and say “Well done on selling a top spec iPad … but you didn’t mention the fact that we have AppleCare in-store. You didn’t mention our in-store workshops. You didn’t invite them to return, and I think that’s something very important that maybe you should bear in mind for your next transaction.”

BI: This sounds like it’s going to go down like a cup of cold sick with every employee.

A: It pretty much does. But you have to do it.

BI: Is it in any way useful?

A: Sometimes it can be. New things happen all the time — like AppleCare+. New products will be released, and there’ll be new software updates. So sometimes it can be useful to be reminded about certain things. But sometimes a customer will come in and say “I want to buy an iPad, this is the spec I want, can you give it to me as quickly as possible?” You’ll say “sure,” and try and tell them about other things when you’re waiting for the product to be brought down, but they say “Seriously, I just want the iPad.”

BI: Some customers know what they’re doing.

A: Exactly. And some customers can get quite irate if you try and tell them information they don’t want to hear.

BI: It is infuriating, like dealing with someone on a script.

A: It is. But you may be given negative feedback for not doing that. Also, when customers give you feedback, they’re asked “Do you know about our in-store business team? Do you know about our workshops? Do you know about the Genius Bar? Do you know about One-To-One? Do you know we do [wireless] contracts?” And if you get marked “no” on that, a manager will come and speak to you and say “We had some feedback recently that the customer didn’t know we did contracts in-store,” even though you’re selling a Mac to someone.

BI: There’s almost a Thought Police aspect to it.

A: Yes.

BI: At Business Insider we give feedback to people, but we don’t have a ritual where I’m forced to give positive and negative feedback to every single employee every single day. That would be insane.

A: At Business Insider, would an intern give feedback to someone above them?

BI: No.

A: We were expected to do that, to give feedback to the managers.

BI: Wow, it’s like Maoist China where you sit in a circle and critique your comrades.

A: When the managers ask you “What feedback did you give today?” it feels like you’re telling on your peers. You say “I gave some negative feedback about this” and they’ll ask “oh, who was that for?”

BI: Did you ever give feedback that resulted in one of your friends getting fired?

A: No, there was never anything as severe as that.

The managers do sometimes listen in.

BI: But over time presumably managers end up hearing that “David doesn’t mention AppleCare” and once they’ve heard this 14 times a week they say “Alright David — you’re out of here for not mentioning AppleCare.”

A: That never happened, because if you hear just once that you’re not mentioning AppleCare you think “I better start mentioning AppleCare.” The feedback mostly ends up saying something stupid like “You were selling a Mac but you didn’t mention that we offer phone contracts in-store.” And you think “No, they wanted a Mac, they already have a phone on contract.” Sometimes a manager will come up to you after a transaction and say “What’s the name of the customer you were dealing with and you’d have to tell them their full name.”

BI: But surely the manager’s not listening in?

A: The managers do sometimes listen in.

BI: They just stand behind you?

A: Yes. But if they hadn’t followed the whole transaction they would come up to you afterwards and say “I want you to tell me about that customer. What was their full name; what product did they buy; what did they want it for; what’s their job and what’s their favourite flavour of ice-cream?” And you think “What the f---?”

BI: The ice-cream is a joke, right?

A: No.

BI: How are you supposed to find out their favourite ice-cream flavour?

A: That was something they would ask you if you were halfway through a transaction and needed manager approval for something. They’d say “How are you getting with that customer? Come back when you know their favourite ice-cream flavour.” You’re supposed to treat the customers who come in like you would your friends, like your parents.

BI: Does Apple do anything with this insane amount of information it’s collecting on these transactions?

A: No. We’re just supposed to make it a personalised connection.

BI: But you’re seeing hundreds of people a day?

A: You are. And that’s why people are waiting an hour, because there are all these hoops we have to jump through to make sure it’s a personalised connection, and that they’re happy.

BI: It strikes me as somewhat dysfunctional if the wait-time to see a member of Apple’s staff is much longer because staff have to jump through these insane hoops in the knowledge that they’ll be interrogated about it afterwards.

A: Yes, it is.

BI: That does sound stressful — you can’t just sell someone a phone.

A: It is, and you can’t, even if that’s exactly what they want. Some people will come in and say “I just want to buy a phone, please just let me buy a phone,” and I think “I’m really sorry, you’re going to have to wait for 40 minutes because everyone else is busy right now talking to customers about other things.”

BI: Like ice-cream.

A: Yes. Another thing that was interesting was if someone wanted to get something repaired. For a long time, if they didn’t have an appointment at the Genius Bar, we would literally send them away even if they came from miles away. We would say “Sorry, you don’t have an appointment today, you’ll have to come back in a week’s time.” And that’s incredibly frustrating for customers. But that was changed a little while ago, now there is more walk-in availability. But it was a relatively poor system for a while. If someone came into the store and said ‘My iPhone’s broken, I use it for business,” we’d have to say “sorry, could you come back in a week?” For some people, that’s not appropriate. And if you don’t get your phone served by Apple or an Apple-authorised service provider, your phone may have voided its warranty and we can’t replace it or even touch it anymore — even if you pay us money.