How Apple's push to rule the smartphone industry has made Apple Store employees feel like robots

It's not just the atmosphere of the sales floor that employees said had changed. Several current or former employees familiar with how the Genius Bar operates also said they had noticed a larger push toward selling products, encouraging iPhone upgrades, and serving a higher volume of customers.

The Genius onboarding experience also underwent an upheaval in recent years. Apple stopped sending prospective Geniuses to its headquarters in California for training around 2017.

"The Genius experience was the best thing that I ever did," said one former employee who attended the training. "It really connected you to the store and to the idea of Apple."

Now, the training for Geniuses is done virtually in local Apple Stores, and trainees are given fewer opportunities to get their hands on Apple devices during the process, said a couple of the people. Both the quality of the training and morale among Geniuses has taken a hit as a result, according to current and ex-employees. For example, a current employee said that a customer recently brought in an Apple desktop computer that none of the other Geniuses at the store had ever repaired.

"They get the opportunity to be the most senior technician, and they don't even get to get their hands inside the computer," one current employee said. "It feels like something has been taken from you."

Apple also began to phase out its One-to-One individualized service program in 2015 and introduced Today at Apple in 2017, free informational group sessions and workshops offered by the Apple Store.

"It essentially became more about volume than it did about the experience and the journey," Zeug said.

A former employee who had spent more than a decade at the Apple Store and led One-to-One sessions said that, with these changes, the Apple Store now lacked the individualized attention it used to offer. There's no place for customers to seek help with specific personal projects — like a slideshow for an upcoming birthday or wedding anniversary, this person said.

Many of these changes happened under the management of Angela Ahrendts, the former Burberry CEO who was tapped to lead Apple Retail in 2014. But Ahrendts left the company earlier this year, and Deirdre O'Brien, a 30-year veteran of Apple who was previously an executive in human resources, now oversees retail in addition to the company's People team.

Apple has been going through a transformation regardless of Ahrendts' tenure, as people have been upgrading their smartphones less frequently. As iPhone sales have fallen year-over-year and the industry has grappled with slowing smartphone sales across the board in recent years, Apple has leaned on services like AppleCare, the App Store, and ancillary products like AirPods and the Apple Store to juice its revenue.

The change in leadership could also signal a shift in priorities to building the Apple Store's business rather than focusing on its image. Ahrendts told Business Insider in 2016 that she wanted to create "incredible places" that simulated town squares. And she left her mark by more closely bridging Apple's online store with its brick-and-mortar locations and elevating Apple's branding, Munster, the Apple expert, said. O'Brien will be tasked with boosting sales and engagement at the Apple Store.

O'Brien has her work cut out for her in that regard. Wall Street already has high hopes for next year's iPhone, which is expected to support 5G connectivity and include a three-dimensional camera system. Analysts are already counting on the company's 2020 flagship smartphone to drive upgrades and bring Apple's iPhone revenue back to growth. Apple's retail stores are sure to play an important role in that effort, as is the staff that drives them.

Although several people who have worked in the Apple Store in recent years have said they noticed a shift that has made the store feel less personal in some ways, the fact that some of them have worked there for more than a decade or close to it is telling. That's especially significant considering the median amount of time wage and salary workers had been with their current employer as of January 2018 was 4.2 years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Despite some of the recent changes some former and current workers have noticed, many of them said the company's investment in personal growth, excellent benefits, and the feeling that you're selling more than just a product have made the Apple Store a rewarding place to work. But most important, it's the people they work with that has kept several employees hooked into the job for years, they've said.

Looking forward, some of the people who have worked at the Apple Store in recent years are optimistic about O'Brien taking over, considering she has been at the company for decades and is well-positioned to deeply understand Apple's culture. It may take some time before we see concrete changes to store policies under O'Brien, however, as one current employee said it took a couple of years for employees to see the results of Ahrendts' plans for the store.

Still, O'Brien has expertise in working with what may be Apple's most important advantage: its people.

"You don't just have one or two people supporting you," said one former employee. "You have like 20. For Apple, that's their strength."