I had to visit the Genius Bar at my local Apple store the other day. My Mac­Book Pro, which I use for work, wouldn’t boot all the way into the main user pro­file. So while I was on a con­fer­ence call, I opened up the Apple Store app on my iPhone, found my local store and made a Genius Bar appoint­ment. No need to juggle two calls, no need to risk mis­com­mu­ni­cat­ing infor­ma­tion to the Apple employee work­ing in a noisy store. I was able to qui­etly sched­ule my appoint­ment and leave a detailed note describ­ing my situation.

I arrived at the store about 5 min­utes before my appoint­ment and checked in using the Apple Store app…and even that process was easier than expected! As soon as I launched the app, it detected that I was at the store and pushed a noti­fi­ca­tion asking if I wanted to check in to my Genius Bar appoint­ment. No need to waste time trying to hunt some­one down to check me in…instead, I was able to spend those valu­able few min­utes play­ing with the new Mac­Book Airs.1 Then, when the Genius Bar was ready for me, I received a push noti­fi­ca­tion let­ting me know as much.

A day or two prior to my own Apple store/iPhone app inte­gra­tion expe­ri­ence, I read a blog post over on Cult of Mac about how the Apple Store app would let you put your­self in a vir­tual queue at the phys­i­cal store and be assigned to a spe­cific employee to pro­vide assis­tance. I looked for that option in the app, but didn’t see it. Maybe it’s only avail­able in a few test mar­kets right now. But how cool is that?!? As much as I love spend­ing time at an Apple Store, trying to track down an avail­able sales asso­ciate can be mad­den­ing. Not only would this vir­tual queue resolve that frus­tra­tion, but it would allow me to focus all of my energy on play­ing with the products.

Apple is con­sis­tently praised for its suc­cess in the retail space, and that praise is well-​deserved. The stores have been a wild suc­cess. But what really impresses me is Apple’s con­tin­u­ous drive to create a better cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. By lever­ag­ing the Apple Store iPhone app to enhance the phys­i­cal retail expe­ri­ence, Apple is not only cre­at­ing a more enjoy­able trip to the phys­i­cal store, but it’s giving cus­tomers the abil­ity to focus all of their drool-​driven energy on look­ing at and play­ing with prod­ucts. Brilliant.