Behind the scenes at Apple Retail

Alex Frankel, a reporter for Fast Company magazine, recently undertook a two-year undercover project to investigate the ways companies train their retail staffs. Among his targets was Apple, and he has concluded that "Apple Stores, with their aura of cool, were in fact living up to their mission to 'reinvent retail' and setting a high bar for other companies in the retail world." Frankel notes how Apple does things differently, treating new employees as adults, but most importantly positioning them as "sharers of information, instead of sellers of products."

I've long thought that Apple basically gets retail right (even if there is room for improvement — e.g. sometimes it takes too long to get help). It's interesting to see just how how they do things differently and why that makes them so successful.

[via Digg]