I visited the Apple store located near Opera in Paris and, my recent visit in New-York in mind, made some comparisons between those two customer experiences.

I must say that besides the color of the salespeople tee-shirts the same recipes have been applied: same simple and uncrowded presentation of the products, same mass presence of salespeople always willing to help customers. The only question mark regarded the professionalism of those very salespeople. I remained very much impressed by what I saw in New-York and could hardly imagine that an approaching level could be expected in France.

I was wrong. I tested two young salesmen and both very talkative, down-to-earth, knew everything about their products and paying VERY much attention to customers’ needs. I’m used to a much lower service quality approach in Europe (and in France in particular) and do wonder what Apple’s secret might be.

My take:

Could the magic recipe be “Hire for attitude and train for skills”?