Microsoft Gurus are not Apple Geniuses
According to a Friday article on Yahoo! Finance, Microsoft is introducing "Microsoft Gurus" at Best Buy and Circuit City stores nationwide. They plan on having 155 Gurus deployed by year-end, and will expand the program based on its success.
While it may seem like this is copying Apple's Genius program, it's not. The Geniuses hang out at the Genius Bar in the local Apple Store, helping new Mac owners migrate data or resolve problems, fixing iPod and iPhone issues, and otherwise giving the customer help when they really need it -- after they've committed money to a product and can't get something to work properly.
In contrast, the Microsoft Guru program is only concerned with pre-sales questions. Gurus provide demos of how Microsoft applications work together, as well as answer questions about PCs in general and Windows in particular. This is reminiscent of Microsoft's previous attempts at having in-store sales reps, particularly in 2004 and 2005 when the company had contract staff at stores to push the ever-popular MSN Direct Smart Watches. You say you've never heard of MSN Direct or Smart Watches? That should give you an idea of how successful that pre-sales program was!
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