Apple Genius Bar: What really goes on behind the scenes at the Apple stores

EXCLUSIVE: They’re the blue-shirted ‘geniuses’ who fix all your tech problems. But what’s it really like behind the scenes? Apple has let us in for the first time to find out.

“WHAT we do here is magic,” says Andres Cordoba, one of around 15 “Geniuses” manning the 17-metre blonde wood Genius Bar at Apple’s flagship store in Sydney.

He’s just helped a customer replace a missing laptop key and she showed him videos she had made of birds to say thanks for his help.

“That was beautiful, she touched me,” said Andres, 32, who is originally from Cali, Colombia and speaks with the sexy accent and elaborate hand gestures made famous by Modern Family’s Sofia Vergara.

“It’s like helping people to achieve their dreams.”

It’s a midweek morning and the Apple store in Sydney is starting to buzz with a collection of multicultural, preppy employees who almost outnumber the customers. They all wear the mandatory blue T-shirts but let their individual style shine through by customising the look with brogues, sneakers, caps or the hijab.

The light and airy Genius Bar sits above the retail storefront made from glass, stainless steel and stone. Around 3,500 people each week pass through the second floor stocked with accessories, where more blue-shirted gen Y workers are teaching baby boomers to create playlists and retirees about the iCloud, to the third floor where the real “magic” happens.

Andres helps a customer on the third floor of Sydney’s Apple store.

It’s the first time in Australia the notoriously secretive company has let someone behind the scenes at the Genius Bar to see what really goes on and this news.com.au reporter jumped at the chance to infiltrate the inner sanctum. The whole store has a preppy cleanliness and seamless order that it makes you feel like you’ve entered tech utopia but then that’s the point, right?

This morning Andres has replaced an iPad for a businessman after his children dropped it, fixed the missing key and told me about another time he saved a laptop full of photos from digital oblivion — for which he received a kiss and a cupcake.

Next up is IT manager Eric Hartono whose iPad won’t hold a charge after sitting on a shelf for six months. It’s still within warranty so Andres replaces it with a brand new one.

“I love the experience of opening the box,” Eric said. “If I sell it second hand I try to take the time to wrap it so [the buyer] can have that experience as well. Maybe it’s just me.”

The Sydney Genius bar sees around 3,500 customers a week.

It’s a rare company that inspires this kind of devotion from customers and staff. Apple is one of them. The $550 billion tech giant founded by the late Steve Jobs has been named the most valuable brand in the world in the past and has an army of global fans who anticipate every product launch and queue overnight for new devices.

Barely a day goes by Apple doesn’t make headlines for everything from speculation over the iWatch to legal stoushes or exactly why they spent $3 billion buying Dr Dre’s headphone company Beats. There’s even a Tumblr Things Apple is worth more than dedicated to showcasing just how much cash Apple really has, more than the entire global coffee industry, for example.

Drop in the bucket. Apple paid $3 billion for Dr Dre’s headphone company Beats recently.

For Andres, who has worked there for three years after moving to Sydney from London, the company provides an “amazing experience” with plenty of development opportunities. He also loves being able to meet different people and help them with their problems.

“It’s a great learning environment, I can learn everyday. Our days go so fast it gets to the end of the shift and oh, I’m finished.”

“We are there to support them, to guide them ... they’re going to love it. That’s what we want at the end of the day,” he said.

James Turnbull helps Andrew Brodala fix an iPhone for a staff member.

It’s six years since Apple opened their flagship store in Australia, now one of 426 stores around the world that see 21,000 customers a week on average. The Genius Bar was the longest in the world at the time it was opened, although new stores now have a circular model. The Sydney version is manned by a Nordic-looking concierge who directs those who have made appointments with an iPad in hand.

Further along is James Turnbull, a 25-year-old Genius and Apple devotee who has been in Sydney three months after transferring from London. He worked in their Covent Garden store for two and a half years and said he’s “super passionate about the opportunity to help people.”

“It’s just been the most amazing experience transferring ... People love the devices all around the world. I haven’t noticed any difference in terms of international thinking,” he said.

TITLE: Omotesando Apple store SIZE: 650x366px CAPTION: The grand opening of an Apple store in Tokyo, Japan.

James helps IT consultant Andrew Brodala find out what’s wrong with one of his staff member’s phones. A quick diagnostic reveals it “came into contact with liquid” otherwise known as dropping it in the toilet but the Genius is too polite to suggest that.

“(My staff member) hasn’t mentioned it but I wouldn’t put it past them,” Andrew admits.

A new phone is retrieved and the sale is completed with a few taps on an iPad — no paper, cash or pens in sight. The remarkably minimal bar is also free of staff water-bottles, coffee cups and mobiles. Staff even wear the little “sim jacks” to open iPhones around their necks or attached to their belts.

The company claims 90 per cent of problems are fixed on the spot. Not that they ever call them problems. Instead of ‘crashed’ and ‘broken’ the words ‘issues’ and ‘options’ are used. Even the customers seem stress free. According to staff, the most common course of anxiety is people losing their data. Hint: If you’re going to the Genius Bar, back up first.

The Apple store in New York.

Whether the seamless experience is due to exceptional staff or a regimented internal culture, Apple won’t say. The mega-brand is notoriously secretive about everything from their hiring practices to training regimes to how much staff are paid.

In his 2012 book Inside Apple, Fortune editor Adam Lashinsky called the company “obsessed with privacy” and included quotes from unnamed employees from engineers to senior executives about the secretive culture that dominates the company.

The Wall Street Journal reported in 2011 that leaked training manuals reveal scripted training and intensive management of interactions with customers. Apple declined to comment.

Note: Not an iWatch. Here’s what some speculate the watch could look like.

For now, the Sydney store is heading into the lunch rush.

A third Genius, Ghassan Hourany, 32 from Western Sydney said he fell in love with the company during his early days as an audio engineering student because you can make music “straight out of the box”.

He’s been at the company for nearly three years now and doesn’t make much music anymore. Not that he would change it for anything.

“I really wanted to get in here, I remember being pretty excited when I got the call.”

Have you ever been to the Apple Genius Bar? What did you think? Leave a comment below or continue the conversation on Twitter @newscomauHQ | @Victoria_Craw