I had a strange experience yesterday that I thought I would share. I visited one of my favorite retail stores, Apple (Note: A distant 2nd to Starbucks). Anyway, it was late in the evening and I needed to quickly purchase a power adapter replacement. Immediately upon entering the store, I immediately noticed a few things:

1. The genius bar. This is the area where you can sign-up and receive technical support from one of the Apple ‘geniuses’. The store was recently remodeled and the genius bar was moved to a location front-and-center to the doorway. Love the Apple geniuses, but I didn’t need them today.

2. The window shoppers. There were tons of people roaming about the store, ‘kicking the tires’ on all of the cool Apple products. I couldn’t tell if any of them were buying anything, but they didn’t seem to be waiting for assistance.

3. The employees. I noticed that all of the Apple employees were busy chatting with the window shoppers and asking if they had questions about the products.

Since I knew exactly what I wanted, I marched to the product area, grabbed the power adapter, opened my wallet and prepared to make the purchase. That’s when it struck me. Where’s the line? I looked around the store for the checkout line for what seemed like 5 minutes. Then, I got lucky and flagged down one of the employees, who happened to be in transit to the back of the store. I received the “one minute” finger (the one your mom gives you when she doesn’t have time to deal with your mess). So, I graciously waited … and waited … and waited … with my credit card in hand.

Then, I noticed someone appearing to be picking up a shipment flagged down the ‘one-finger employee’. Yes, I was mad. The employee spent about 10 minutes retrieving the customer’s items from the back of the store, asking the customer to sign a stack of paperwork, then instructing the customer to wait to actually make the purchase. I overheard the employee telling the customer that I’d already asked for checkout service. I immediately thought “at least she didn’t forget about me.” I calmed down … a bit.

At this point, both the shipment-pickup customer and myself are standing in the middle of the floor waiting … and waiting … and bonding over the fact that there is no checkout line. We both notice our Apple employee asking their coworker to help us checkout “when they got an opportunity”, but the other employee responded with a shrug, as if to say “I don’t have time for all of that, I’m helping people.” Sigh.

Our Apple employee disappeared to the back of the store. I briefly considered eBay or another store, but really needed this power adapter immediately and it was late in the day. We both looked around desperately for help. Who will take our money!? It felt weird. The geniuses were busy providing technical support. All other Apple employees were busy answering questions and selling stuff to the window shoppers. So we continued to wait. That’s when we noticed an Apple employee actually taking money from a customer. OMG! We both hovered around (stalked, shadowed) the lucky customer that actually found a way to make a purchase. When their checkout process was complete, the employee actually tried to escape us, but we made him take our money.

True story.

Don’t underestimate the ‘quick sale’. When developing the checkout process for your website, be sure that you don’t slow down the process with extraneous information and functions unrelated to processing payments. A quick checkout is also a way to provide great customer service. Not all customers are as patient as the shipment pickup guy and me.

TIPS:

1. Place your related products/up-selling content areas on the pages were the user makes the decision to purchase. Don’t interrupt the checkout process with up-selling activities.
2. Separate your customer service areas from the checkout process.
3. The process for making a purchase should be clear and immediately obvious.
4. Once a customer has decided to make the purchase (added the item to their cart) and have indicated that they are ready to checkout, start the process IMMEDIATELY.