Apple’s ex-retail chief Ahrendts brushes off criticism, says ‘I know the facts… Mission accomplished’

“Former Apple Inc. retail head Angela Ahrendts defended her revamp of the company’s stores over the past five years, and called her tenure ‘Mission accomplished,'” Mark Gurman and Taylor Riggs report for Bloomberg. “Today at Apple, the company’s program for teaching customers in stores, was ‘absolutely huge,’ Ahrendts said Friday in an interview with Bloomberg Television at the C2 business conference in Montreal.”
“While the Apple stores were redesigned during her leadership, some consumers and employees felt the dedicated ‘Genius Bar’ service area shouldn’t have been removed and the process of buying products has become more difficult,” Gurman and Riggs report. “There have also been complaints about overall customer service and the knowledge of some employees.”
“Ahrendts dismissed the criticisms,” Gurman and Riggs report. “‘When I left, retention rates were at an all-time high, up over 20 points in the five years, and customer loyalty scores “were at historic highs. Again, I know the facts,’ Ahrendts said.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As per facts, yes, she was wildly overpaid in her position by several tens of millions of dollars*, but without Ahrendts, many of Apple’s largest, most impressive Retail Stores wouldn’t exist or be in the process of being build today.
*Cook was likely in a bit of a panic after the Browett debacle, with the position unfilled for so long afterwards, of which Ahrendts astutely took full advantage.
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