Everybody knows these mobile phone shops: rows and rows of shiny new gadgets attached to some security device that beeps horribly, if you pull a bit to harshly on the string attached to the phone you want to try out. How on earth have these shops and their terrible user experience changed so little? Some observations about what is wrong with the customer experience. Some time ago I was waiting for my turn at our local Orange shop. As anybody reading this piece probably knows, I’ll most likely be one of the very last people to switch away from my beloved iPhone. But hey, I had a couple of minutes and there was a row of smartphones from all the companies and mobile phone platforms known to man in front of me, why not give them a spin? Does Windows Phone really look and feel that cool? How is it that Samsung seems to produce some worthy competition to the iPhone? Questions that needed to be answered some day!

Have tech retailers really learnt nothing in the twelve years since the first Apple Store?

But, alas, it was not this day or any other day in a regular mobile phone shop for that matter. Why? These things, though very nice feeling phones, were totally useless for checking out some of the most common features:

• No SIM-Card in the demo-phones
• No connection to the internet
• No preconfigured email-address or email inbox
• No preloaded photos to experience the photo gallery app
• No interesting apps or games preloaded on the device to explore

How the hell am I supposed to find out if this phone is any good? How shall I experience it’s web browser, email app and great screen if there is no connection to the web, no configured email account and no gorgeous pictures in the photo gallery app? Have tech retailers really learned nothing in the twelve years since the first Apple Store? The only thing that is better than it used to be: you usually won’t find any of those ugly fake phones with a sticker as their screen any more – they’ve learned that. A next post will be about why this might be the case. But until then let’s look at somebody who seems to have nailed it.