The Legal Mac :: What if Apple Stores Billed by the Hour?
Apple Stores are known for their knowledgeable personnel and excellent customer service. Not coincidentally, those are also the hallmarks of outstanding law firms. This month, the Law Practice Today's The Legal Mac features an article from Jay Shepherd which questions what it would be like if these stores were run like law firms — and by extension, why law firms can't be run more like Apple Stores. It is a very thought-provoking article, and I hope you enjoy it. – Ben Stevens, The Mac Lawyer
What if Apple Stores Billed by the Hour? Lessons for Law Firms by Jay Shepherd
A few weeks ago, I was out to dinner with my wife and girls. Nearby was an Apple Store, so while we waited, I scurried over for a quick purchase. I needed to get a new antiglare plastic sheet for my iPhone. Keep in mind, I was going to purchase what is probably the least expensive item in the Apple Store.
Anyway, I got to the store, made my way over to the iPhone accessories (there are about six million of them), grabbed a screen protector, and took a moment to see if there’s anything else I need (“need” being a vague term). At this time, a store representative, Anil (or it could have been Pete or Algernon – I don’t remember the names, so I’m invoking dramatic license and inventing them) came over and asked if I needed any help. This occurred not in a hovering, vulturelike, typical salesperson way, but rather in an “I’m-here-to-help” way.
“No,” I said, holding up my screen protector and my iPhone. “I just needed to get this.” He replied, “Great. But that particular protector is for the original iPhone. You have an iPhone 3G. You need this one.” Of course, he was right, and I swapped protectors with the correct one that he handed me. He then led me over to Angelina (license again), who took my credit card and quickly rang me up on her little handheld device. She asked me if I found everything I needed, and I confirmed that I did.
At that point, Angelina pointed to the screen protector and asked, “Do you want help putting that on?” If you’ve ever tried to put an adhesive sheet of plastic onto a piece of glass, it’s tricky. If you stick it on too early, you end up misaligned and, well, stuck. “Sure,” I said. She then called Pam over, telling me that Pam was the best screen-protector sticker-onner.
Pam led me over to another table. She took my iPhone and gently and carefully cleaned the glass face. Then, with the movements of a nimble surgeon, she peeled the backing off the protector, lined it up, and lowered it to about a millimeter above the glass. Then — and this is the cool part — she just dropped it that last millimeter. The protector floated down and landed evenly on the screen.
Pam then took a card and squeegeed the protector so that no bubbles would form under it. And that was it. My screen protector was perfectly installed, my receipt was being emailed to me, and the whole process took about six minutes from start to finish. I returned to my family just in time to sit down and order dinner.
So to recap: three Apple Store team members waited on me, all working together to make the smallest possible Apple Store sale. No one cross-sold me anything. I didn’t get snookered into a new Apple Cinema Display or a new MacBook Air. Three employees: $14.95 in sales revenue.
Now what if the Apple Store was run like a law firm? What if the Apple Store billed by the hour?
First of all, Anil, Angelina, and Pam would all use timesheets to keep track of the work they do each day. They would be required to divide up and account for their time in tenth-of-an-hour increments. I only spent about six minutes in the store, but each one of them would have to record his or her interaction with me. Since six minutes would be the smallest amount possible, each would record a “0.1” on that day’s timesheet.
Anil would write, “Conference with client in regards to optimal protection for said client’s iPhone 3G screen, to wit: a screen protector. Referral to Angelina for point-of-sale transaction … 0.1 hours.”
Angelina: “Conference with client in regards to point-of-sale transaction for one (1) screen protector for said client’s iPhone 3G (three G). Discussion in regards to additional products needed for purchase. Referral to Pam for screen-protector installation … 0.1 hours.”
And Pam: “Conference with client in regards to installation of iPhone screen protector. Cleaning and maintenance of said client’s said iPhone screen. Further conference with client in regards to having a nice evening … 0.1 hours.”
But in reality, law-firm clients resist double (or triple) billing by multiple lawyers. So firms often have to write down the time of other lawyers. In this scenario, two of the Apple team members would have had their time cut. Since only Angelina actually generated revenue (by swiping my credit card), Anil and Pam’s time would have been cut. This is ironic, since Anil (by helping me get the right protector) and Pam (by affixing it) gave me the most value.
Of course, law firms want their associates to bill as much time as possible, and they discourage nonbillable time. So if the Apple Store were run like a law firm, Anil and Pam would have been discouraged from such “nonbillable” work as helping me choose or affix an inexpensive screen protector, in favor of “billable” work like selling a new Mac Pro. If the Apple Store employees focused on selling billable hours, they wouldn’t be wasting time helping customers with little things like this.
But then again, if that had been the case, maybe I wouldn’t have returned to an Apple Store a few weeks later to buy the $2,500 MacBook Air that I wrote this article on.
In law firms where lawyers are measured by the hours they bill, they are effectively punished for nonbillable time spent helping clients. Which is why people love going to the Apple Store, and hate dealing with lawyers.
A coda to this story: I went to the Chestnut Hill ( Mass.) Apple Store to buy a conversion cord (USB to Ethernet) for the aforementioned MacBook Air. Tony, an Apple Store “business partner,” greeted me and offered to get the cable. In chatting with him, I happened to mention that I bought my Air about three weeks before the recent Apple Worldwide Developers Conference. At the WWDC, to my chagrin, Apple had announced a $800 price cut on the Air I had just bought. My purchase was a few days too early to qualify for the discount.
“Let me see what I can do,” Tony said.
And here I was just making small talk. I had resigned myself to unlucky bad timing; I hadn’t been asking for an exception.
A short while later, Tony had rerun my MacBook Air purchase with the $800 discount. Wow. All I can say is “wow.”
Here’s a guy who had worked there for three years, loves his job, and excels at helping people. To be sure, his help took $600 out of Apple’s sales revenue that day (you see, after receiving the discount, I bought a few more things that I wouldn’t have otherwise bought). But the bottom line is that I spend thousands of dollars with Apple each year. (Our whole law firm uses Macs and iPhones.) In the long run, Tony’s help will encourage me to spend thousands more in the future.
If Tony billed by the hour, this never would have happened.
About the Author
Jay Shepherd is the CEO of Shepherd, a Boston employment-law firm devoted to helping employers succeed, and he also publishes The Client Revolution blog and Gruntled Employees.
How would a law firm price its services if it is run like an Apple store? How would it measure & reward individual lawyer's performance?