Customer Experience - Waiting in Line at the Apple Store for iPhone 4

Like so many people I and a few others braved the long wait at an Apple store for the iPhone 4. Yes I do understand that shipments could have been provided if I had been lucky enough to avoid the pre-order snafu, but we thought we might get lucky enough to snag one of the cool little devices.

We arrived around 6am in the morning to a pair of massively long lines: one group for customers who successfully "reserved" their iPhone 4s and another for "first come, first served". After the store opened the "first come, first served" line did move initially well. The questions from customers were pretty much the same "Are there going to be enough iPhones?", "Will the wait be long?", "If the wait is long should we come back later?" The answers were vague: "Are there going to be enough iPhones?", answer: "We have no idea of the inventory levels and will not know all day. Nothing I can tell you about that." Next... "Will the wait be long?"/"If the wait is long should we come back later?", answer "We are trying to move people along as quickly as possible. No idea about how long the wait will be. It will be pretty long judging by the number of customers."

Around 9am the "reserved" line was moving along, and the "first come, first served" line pretty much stopped. When asked why that occurred, the Apple store reps mentioned that they changed the ratio to favor the "reserved"... 10 reserved were being let in, to every 1 of the "first come, first served". Around 12pm as sandwiches were being handed out, the "first come, first served" did not move at all. Sending some friends over to the "reserved" line, yielded purely visual results of them moving about 50feet after 30mins of observation.

At this point the crowd in the "first come, first served" were growing restless. Many simply wanted an to know if iPhones would still be available. The answers were vague though several store employees "believed" that there were enough iPhone 4s.

At 7pm after being served lots of water and dinner the "reserved" line continued to process and the "first come, first served" line were told that all iPhones were "sold out" and that they could stay if they wanted to be on a "priority list". The list would guarantee an iPhone 4 would be made available to them when it arrived. When a new shipment would arrive none of the Store reps could say; anywhere from tomorrow (where we could stand in the "reserved" line and wait to get an iPhone 4 after several hours) to up to 4 weeks or more out. Almost all of the "first come, first served" refused the "priority list" mostly because of the ambiguity of receiving the device.

Overall the experience was quite fascinating. People were willing, including ourselves, to stand in a line for up to 14hrs. What I did notice about the customer experience happened to be:

• Apple store reps came by as frequently as possible to give updates. They communicated frequently and often what they could.
• Apple store reps purchased lunch/dinner for the lines. They also passed out water, gave out snacks and generally tried to empathize with the hundreds of people in both sets of lines.
• The Apple store reps kept their professionalism and cool even when people in both lines were getting frustrated and angry; they answered questions as honestly and completely as possible.
• Not one means of managing the user experience was done with technology as opposed to good old fashion "people power." 
• They all represented Apple even though they all were individuals. Some were dressed professionally, most were in jeans, wearing hats, some had electric blue hair, others tattooes, etc. Yet they all wore the Store rep t-shirts and they all worked together to provide the smoothest experience for their customers.

The customers in both lines who included college students, business professionals, teachers, grandmothers, families, construction workers, airplane stewards, truck drivers, retired military professionals, and more were  very social and polite engaging each other in the lines. Many of the individuals that we spoke to had "never done anything like this" - wait in line for hours for any device. They were quite amazed at what they were doing.

Interestingly individuals from both lines had quite a lot of suggestions to improve the process. One of the topics that arose as a common idea was the concept of dedicated days for customers. Most thought that Thursday and Friday should have been for the "reserve" customers and after those initial days Apple stores could have organized themselves for the "first come, first served" crowds. The approach of processing both sort of made the "first come, first served" crowd feel like they were a lower priority and importance to Apple than the other line. In certain cases heckles and jibes were exchanged. Nothing rude but generally reflecting the mood of being treated differently based on classes of customers openly by Apple.

Overall though the combination of appeal for the iPhone 4, coupled with a very good staff at the Apple stores and how they reached out and engaged the customers did outstanding work. Even if after 14hrs not everyone managed to get an iPhone 4.