I recently purchased an IMac from Apple for my daughter. And I realized that in a world filled with decreasing customer loyalty and foreboding customer experience – Apple is quietly creating a customer revolution. And it’s doing so by going back to the basics.
Here is how that revolution is being conducted
* Knowledgeable team of people who are young, motivated, and intelligent. Once you proclaim that you are there to buy something you will be assigned an expert. That expert walks with you around the store zapping on UPC labels placed on interesting products with his bar code gun.
* This generates a wish list which is printed for you – complete with current offers and promotions
* Highly simplified pricing and promotions. No coupons or rebate forms necessary. If a promotion exists in the Apple world it is printed out for you.
* A fantastic rebate system. All rebates are processed automatically and electronically once you complete the purchase. I received 2 emails from Apple giving me the status of my rebates and received a check for $300 in 7 days. No more cutting out UPC labels, attaching original receipts, and waiting for 4 to 8 weeks
* A product that just works. From the time I cracked open the package (the packaging itself is revolutionary) I had the whole thing up and running in 45 minutes. No blue screen, no CTRL-ALT-DEL keyboard sequence. no “abort” messages, no endless hourglasses, and “device not responding error”, and no clicking on a Start button to Shutdown.
How would our world be if every enterprise defined customer service the way Apple does. Take the ever sinking airline industry, for example. My latest airline encounter was with a near in-tears flight attendant who gave me her business card and asked for help finding a job. Being a single mother living in Seattle she had no confidence that the airline (I didn’t say United, did I) would take care of her and fully expected to be sacked in the next 30 days. That would be the equivalent of my Apple buddy searching for a job online as he demonstrated the computer to me. I couldn’t but help wonder, as I patiently chewed on my pretzel treat, if the pilot was browsing through monster.com as he prepared to land the plane at LAX looking for a job.
Remember, Apple wasn’t in a very different place a few years ago. Financially strapped and criticized as a :has been”. But they turned it around. And they did so by placing the customer in the center. So may be it’s time for some airline to stand up and notice, that instead of putting the customer in the middle seat – try putting the customer just in the middle. Things might actually change. And that beats the heck out of charging $2 for water.
