Apple VP Ahrendts tells staff best way to buy Apple Watch


Memo via Business Insider:

The days of waiting in line and crossing fingers for a product are over for our customers. The Apple Store app and our online store make it much easier to purchase Apple Watch and the new MacBook. Customers will know exactly when and where their product arrives.

This is a significant change in mindset, and we need your help to make it happen. Tell your customers we have more availability online, and show them how easy it is to order.

You'll make their day.

For years Apple has basically exploited its customers for free publicity. People would stand in line for hours, local news would show up and that would help drive hype for new products. Pushing customers to use online systems not only makes for a better customer experience, but it must help enormously with logistics to get the most possible number of boxes to customers on launch day.

The iPhone 6 launch seemed to take an ugly turn with black market line sitters getting products to send to Asia. People were bussed to stores and it didn't appear they were really benefiting or even willing participants in the black market scheme.

Now if Apple wanted to provide an even better experience, they would deploy a system for pre-orders at a more reasonable time. 3 AM for the east coast customers to just start a process that usually slogs on for an hour or more isn't exactly a good customer experience either.