Genius Bar Flowchart

Not everyone who comes to the Genius Bar of an Apple store has a life-or-death problem. Actually, probably no one arrives with that urgent a problem. But either way, all of the problems or questions are funneled to the same location and to the same personnel.

The chart below depicts the perceived proportion of Genius Bar visitors who have questions, non-urgent problems and critical issues. As you can see, the largest portion of visitors are the "how to" category," a much smaller percentage have serious hardware failures that represent the loss of revenue or time.

And the "green zone" is getting larger all the time as more "new to Mac" customers buy their first Macintosh or iPod. Windows computer users are also helping to increase the Genius bar "how to" question category, since they have no previous reference for how things get done with a Macintosh ("Sorry...there's no ALT key.).

More interestingly is that the non-urgent issues and questions probably take up an equivalently large amount of time--a "how to" question can take 20-30 minutes to answer, while a failed hard drive or other hardware problem can be diagnosed almost immediately and written up for repair in under 10 minutes. As a result, the Genius Bar visitors who really need the service, and whose problems are unequivocal, on average wait the longest for service.

Somehow, Apple should be able to split off visitors into two categories: those with questions and non-emergent problems, which take time to either diagnose or solve (the green zone), and those with urgent, easily-diagnosed repairs that can be quickly and easily checked in for service with little work by the Mac Genius (the red zone). Now, even when you know your computer doesn't work, and know why it doesn't, and know that it will require an overnight stay or a trip to the repair depot, you're stuck at the Genius Bar listening to some ask why their Virex software doesn't work after the trial period.

This division of duties would also assist with repair pick-ups, which require only a paperwork transaction, instead of the current wait for a free Genius.