Apple lesson in customer care
I am a recent Mac convert, at least at home, and a big fan of the company and their products.
Recently, Apple made many loyal customers unhappy when they cut the price of their cool new iPhone by $200, from $599 to $399.
This is actually a widely known and accepted practice in technology: as soon as a high-demand tech item goes on sale, there is a price premium to be paid. Early adopters know this and buy willingly. Some time later, prices drop.
The thing is, the iPhone's price drop was pretty steep, and happened only a few weeks after the product was launched.
Users were not happy and wrote to Apple in droves. The flip side: Apple's success is based on happy, or rather passionate, customers.
What did Steve Jobs do?
He wrote an open letter to original iPhone customers explaining why Apple did what they did, the long-term effects they are looking for, and apologizing for not taking care of early iPhone customers as well as they could have. And he also gave all early iPhone buyers a $100 credit.
In other words:
- Acknowledge the mistake. Even if, as in this case, it wasn't really an error, just an unfortunate situation).
- Apologize immediately. Explain what happened.
- If possible, make it up to the customer. I feel this is icing on the cake, as customers will be pleasantly surprised with steps one and two. But if you can also give them something extra, go for it.
If Apple can do this for hundreds of thousands of its customers, it should be pretty easy for small and medium businesses to adopt such a proactive attitude when something goes wrong with their clients. In fact, very easy, as most screw-ups happen just one customer at a time.
Tags: customer satisfaction, branding, Apple, iPhone, Steve Jobs, best practices
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