The just-opened Boylston Street (Boston) retail store is capable of handling 1,000 Genius Bar appointments per 15-hour weekday, according to promotional material released before the store opened. And behind that figure lies a benchmark of Apple’s handling of meetings between those who need service and the Genius staff. Since the store in open 15 hours a day, there would be about 67 meetings per hour. The Genius Bar has 17 stools, meaning that each stool would handle about four appointments per hour. And doing the math on that figure, it’s easy to see that Apple expects each Genius Bar appointment to average about 15 minutes long. That coincides with the sign-up form on the Concierge computer system, which uses 15-minute increments for bookings.
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If you only had one genius doing service for all 17 people on the stools at a given time, then yes. However, there will likely be more than 17 geniuses at the Bar, so appointments can be 15 minutes long, which is what apple actually expects. [Sorry...I wrote the original story after attending the grand opening, and was virtually asleep. Now corrected.]
I’m getting a bit more than 15 minutes per appointment when I do the math, definitely not 4 minutes.
Definitely a mathematical error, if all 17 stools were operational and were serving 67 people per hour, each appointment would last 15 minutes, or where I think you got confused is 4 appointments per hour.
uh yeah, as others pointed out… that’s totally ridiculous. or a mistake.
Well – it’s pretty easy to see by looking at the online reservation system for genius bar at the store, http://www.apple.com/retail/boylstonstreet/home.html, that Mac appointments are booked 15 minutes apart and iPod and iPhone are every 10 minutes…
Not hard to imagine a thousand daily appointments even with seats left unfilled and lunch breaks, etc…
17 (stools) x 4 (reservations per stool per hour) x 15 (hours in the day) = 1,020. [IFO -- OK, approximately.]
Here are a few shots of “opening day” the Apple Store on Boylston Street. We were quite impressed with the energy of the staff and crowd. The central staircase is simply stunning. A great addition to Boston.
Former employee here. Apple expects Mac appointments to run ~20min and iPod/iPhone ~10.
I worked at Apple when they were moving towards the 15 minute appointments. Bad idea really, you can’t be as helpful as the GB once was back in the day. But then again like most big companies it’s all about the $$$$ and Apple Retail is no different.
Did you hear that? It’s the sound of Apple Jumping the shark!
Apple did not know how to run the Genius Bar when it first opened retail. It has matured and is now doing it well. There is no such thing as perfect, but they are offering a free service as well as can be expected. It is still being refined with the QuickDrop. Where else can you receive 10 to 20 minutes of free service? This is improving and growing. No way is this even close to “Jumping the Shark.”
You can receive as much free Genius Bar type services as you want at my store, which is an Apple Specialist in Hollywood.
The length of Mac and iPod/iPhone appointments is decided by store management, and can be adjusted at will using the back-end access to the Concierge system. Typically, changing the length of these appointments is only done rarely, but technically the change could happen at any time and as often as management would like for future appointments. I think the options for Mac appointments are 15 or 20 min. and for iPod appointments are 10 or 15 min. Decisions as to which times to use are typically based on Genius head count and store/bar traffic.
That being said, it’s not uncommon to see customers at the bar for 30-60 minutes, especially for complex Mac software problems. The appointment window is when a customer will get nearly undivided attention. After the end of that window, if the Genius needs more time to work on an issue, they are supposed to check in with the next customer and work on their issue, but check back in with the other customer when time permits. This is part of the reason why software problems are regularly addressed with an archive and re-install — set the re-install to begin, work with a few other customers, check back in with the re-install from time to time while it completes.
I would recommend online appointment setting to any and every one that does scheduling. Why not give the freedom to your customers or users to set their own schedules? With a few good rules and penalties for late cancellations my customers have learned quick and even comment on how much they love the service.