Let me tell you a tale of two very different customer experiences. At this time of year many of us are heavily involved in holiday shopping, or else we are doing new contracts for services or reviewing our budgets at work. It got me thinking about what sort of customer experiences we want to have, and how can we identify a couple of rules that make the difference. These two customer experiences really happened to me this weekend…and they provide a good model to review the customer experiences we receive and want to give every day.We decided for Christmas to gift my mother-in-law with an iPhone. She is pretty up to date with modern technology, and it was both a useful and fun present for someone who likes geeky things and can use it in her business. At the same time, Genevieve decided to gift me with one of the same new iPhone 3Gs’s and we decided to update her from her Blackberry to an iPhone and put us all on an AT&T contract.
The Apple store was packed with people, both shoppers and staff. As soon as we walked in we were warmly greeted by an easily identifiable Apple “Genius” in a red top. (By the way, it takes a certain self-confidence to call your sales associates and technical support people Geniuses). We outlined what we were after and in a few moments we were seated comfortably at a table with a bright, young associate eager to demonstrate how the iPhone worked. (Luke: Thank you, you truly are a Genius.) However we still had one question: we had an iPhone already and wanted to know how we could get it onto a family calling plan. Luke explained that he could put iPhones purchased in the store onto an AT&T plan, but could not connect the existing phone to a plan. He suggested we talk directly with AT&T, and showed us where we could find a representative.
Here is where our troubles started.
The AT&T staff were standing around talking with each other, dressed in a wide variety of clothes, and hardly interacting at all with customers who came to their store. When we did get someone’s attention we were shown through a dizzying assortment of plans and prices. On more than one occasion I had to stop the associate to confirm what we were being told. An example: “So this thing is ‘free’ provided we pay more for this other thing?” Many of the plans and handsets were discounted or on special. We left the store once we had got a specific answer to our specific question about putting an existing iPhone onto an AT&T plan, (or so we thought).
We purchased our two new iPhones and returned to the AT&T store to put them onto a new family plan along with our existing iPhone. Here’s where the trouble started. It turned out we had been given incorrect information about the plan, and to put our existing phone with AT&T and change after twelve months as we wished was going to cost us about $115 more than we had been told. No-one in the store denied we had been given the wrong information, (about an hour before). They just apologized and said we could at least get our money back on the iPhones…not so helpful if you’ve just cancelled your previous plan. We talked with a manager, who didn’t seem to have any authority to fix what one of his staff had cost us, and eventually after about half an hour of discussion and various phone calls to their ‘customer service’ line we were given a credit to our account of $115. During that time we were offered free phones we didn’t want, (and obviously didn’t need), and we weren’t told some obvious things about our plans which we obviously did need, (like overseas access since we had told them the iPhone was an early Christmas present because Camille was just about to fly to France).
Meantime, I have since returned a headset that didn’t work to the Apple store. They looked up my account, (on the spot), confirmed the date of purchase, told me the piece was out of warranty, helped me get the supplier's address, and gave me a new, (free), replacement headphone while they took on the responsibility of sending the faulty headset back to the manufacturer.
We were extremely happy with Apple, not so much with AT&T. I should emphasize that it wasn’t so much about the individuals who served us. I believe each of them were well-intentioned and ably trained. It was more about the way the organizations approached their market and empowered their staff to live their brand. Everyone makes mistakes with their customers sometimes, so what was so different about Apple’s approach? Here are a couple of things that spring to mind.
1: Pricing. Apple has a good product and tries to price it fairly and simply. When they make a mistake, as they did with the original iPhone pricing, they admit it. (They gave the original purchasers of iPhones a rebate. Given these people must have known they were paying a premium for being the first to own the new devices the rebate sounds like a smart marketing move when it transpired that Apple weren’t selling enough phones at the original price.) Meantime, Apple have no confusing specials, sweet deals or “free” add-ons that cost money. Personally, I would rather give my service away to someone if they genuinely want to try out what I do than cheapen my product by discounts and concessions.
2: Quality. When you have a good product you don’t need to compensate. Customers of all kinds are pleased to get what they pay for, and usually appreciative whenever their expectations are exceeded. In the Apple store my mother-in-law was giggling like a little girl whenever the sales associate showed her something her ‘smart phone’ could do. It wasn’t just the apps, it was the voice recognition built in, the tagged voicemails, the compass and lots of other things that served as surprise and delight items.
3: Service. The Apple associates genuinely came across as loving their jobs and proud of their product. The demonstrations were enthusiastic without coming across as sales pitches. When something went wrong, like my faulty headset, they were empowered to make it right on the spot. When they didn’t know the answer to a question they said so, and went and discovered where the answer could be found.
Price, quality, service: my marketing professors used to tell us to “pick any two”. Apple shows you that it’s possible to optimize all three without sacrificing profitability. Without dwelling too much on AT&T’s strategy let’s focus on the positive aspects of Apple’s go-to-market philosophy. You can easily sum up their brand as leading edge technology that’s easy to use. You get quality and service and you know you’re paying something of a premium in terms of price. I'm not sure what AT&T's branding is and I'm sure I don't know what they stand for to their consumers, (at least these consumers).
Principled businesses try to make the experience for their customers satisfying in each area while being candid about needing the relationship to be profitable. Principled leaders try equally hard to ensure they have a “leadership brand” and they are transparent about what they stand for and what people can expect from them. Not so all businesses and not so all leaders.
So in your business, do you follow Apple’s strategy, or are you an AT&T?
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