“Samsung, Microsoft and Sony passed Apple in a 2014 measurement of customer opinions of what it was like to deal with the company, according to a new survey published by Forrester Research,” Daisuke Wakabayashi reports for The Wall Street Journal. “his is the third year that Forrester conducted a survey for consumer electronics companies and it’s the first year that Apple has lagged behind Samsung, Microsoft or Sony.”
“The survey attempts to quantify the somewhat squishy and hard-to-define criteria of customer experience,” Wakabayashi reports. “Forrester assigns each company a customer-experience index score based on a survey of how 7,500 U.S. consumers responded to these three questions: How enjoyable were they to do business with? How easy were they to do business with? How effective were they at meeting your needs?”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Judging by this, and by many anecdotal accounts we’ve received, including one of our staff member’s last visit to an Apple Retail Store where she stood ignored for at least 20 minutes before the iPad Air for which she had already paid was located, then was made to walk from the front to the far back of the store to be checked out (hence totally and idiotically defeating the benefit to the customer of Apple’s cash register-free system), Angela’s got some work to do to recover from the the Tim Cook-induced Browettization of Apple Retail and its aftermath.
Apple Retail Stores have gone from magical in the Steve Jobs/Ron Johnson days to passable-at-best-but-usually-worse under Tim Cook/John Browett/Nobody.
Note to Apple Retail Store employees and management:
1. The customer always comes first.
2. The customer is king, not cattle.
3. You do the walking, not the customer. (You work in a service industry, so serve.)
4. Do not waste the customers’ time.
5. Customers who are picking up items deserve priority over all others as they have already purchased product; do not hold paying customers hostage.We hope Angela Ahrendts will rectify this situation.
I have had exceptional service weather in the Apple Store or by phone with customer service. That said, I can see what many people are talking about as far as the overcrowding and overworked employees. That’s a great problem to have if your retailer. But it is a very tense situation when entering an Apple retail store. The employees are still very helpful but there’s just a sea of customers to try to deal with. Much, much busier than even two or three years ago. I would have to say that the customer service by phone is still as helpful as ever but less knowledgeable than in the past. Difficult to hire and train enough competent people to man those positions. Again, that’s a great problem to have if you ‘re a retailer. When you have so many customers calling for help or advice that means you’re selling off a lot of your stuff. I don’t for a minute believe the accuracy of this survey but I do believe that customer service has dropped due to the overwhelming number of customers. I suppose the only answer is to work harder at providing enough qualified Apple employees to serve all of its customers. Sony and Microsoft only wish they had such a dilemma.
Spell check: Giving dummies a false sense of security since the 1990s…
Unfortunately it’s a mess in Germany as well. Apple genius employees are even rude if you have a problem you need their help with 🙁
While I rarely have need to get help in my local Apple store, on the last two occasions when I did need help, it was given without hesitation: the first time I’d driven twelve miles to the store, without booking an appointment. I was passed to a rather harassed Genius guy, who was dealing with several other queries, but he spent several minutes with me, (my iPad was refusing to charge up), tried a couple of things, went to see other people, but kept coming back to check on me. Problem was sorted in less than twenty minutes, I went home a happy bunny.
It might be just a US thing, my local store is Bath, England.
Do Samsung actually have stores?
Sony do, but they’re very small ones over here.
I’m not sure what the survey encompasses as the questions are kinda vague , do they just count direct interactions with Apple or with their reps like Big Box retailers?
When I went to my Walmart ‘SuperCenter’ I couldn’t buy a Thunderbolt Cable (or even mini D) for my new Macbook – they had no idea what thunderbolt was although they carried Macs that use thunderbolt. So if you bought a mac from them you couldn’t connect an ext. monitor but had to go somewhere else or buy online. A customer might blame Apple and not Walmart (and I’m sure the customer would be pretty pissed). (also how is Apple marketing promoting thunderbolt – one of their next big things – if the one of the largest Apple partners Walmart doesn’t carry the cables? Or at least my Walmart doesn’t. Apple should drive it into their partners brains that Thunderbolt is important ).
2) Apple’s online web stores suck in some ways vs their competition (harder to look for stuff if they are not top ranked etc ).
3) allowing Big Box like Walmart undercut prices means that many smaller Apple resellers are hurt. And Big Box retailers usually don’t repair or service equipment. The local Mac guys near my house and who fix macs now sell photocopy and other office equipment. So if you live in small town like me with no Apple Store : Apple Service is worse, eventually I might have to mail order apple stuff to repair.
Apple should make sure the WHOLE system: production, marketing, service works smoothly and that includes partners.
Hope Ahrendts will also help apple straighten out their retail partners besides work on Apple Stores and online.
Looking at the data, Apple’s score actually went up, not down. It’s just that all the other scores inexplicably went up substantially. What is the explanation of the sudden massive increase of 10% or more in the competitor’s scores?
My local apple store in East London is a nightmare. Not enough staff and quite a wait to get seen to. I had a problem which I had to speak to apple care Monday I was on the phone for an hour and there was no solution. The person on the other end had to keep asking other people for help and really did not take ownership of situation.I have noticed things have gone worse on the customer service front as of late sadly, they do need improving.
I have to say that I’ve always been treated well at Apple Stores. However, the popularity of the stores makes them into some sort of “zoo”. Its hard to walk around, hard not to bump into other people. I think they need to separate the service side of the store from the selling. Perhaps they need separate locations nearby for the tech support. There are just too many people in the stores.
Well, I am only a single statistic, but I broke the screen on my iPhone 5 and it was fixed in half an hour. My wife’s Asus Nexus stopped working and now she is going through hoops trying to send it back to them to maybe get fixed. I reminded her again why I bought Apple products 🙂
I am still amazed at the degree to which Browett was able to screw up the Apple stores in such a short amount of time. And that Cook, the other senior executives and the board allowed it to happen. I guess they just handed him the keys and looked the other way. This is the biggest red mark on Cook’s tenure, thus far, IMHO.
I have only ever had sterling treatment at my local Apple stores. The people who ruin the experience for every are the professional “wounded customers”. They go in and act with righteous indignation about how incredibly poorly they’ve been teated in hopes of getting something free. Like the people with broken iPhone glass who think Apple should just give them a free replacement after they dropped their phone on the concrete (without AppleCare of course).
This survey is bunk. Just click bait.
Notice in the graph, Wpple has not declined. They caused the others to up their game. Statistically, all except for Amazon are basically tied.
In my experience, the average Amazon purchase has no interaction with actual people. It’s all automated. The few times that I have had to involve people, it has been horrible.
Their service could be rated first in this or any article and there will still be whiners complaining about cook, iOS 7, anything. I have had nothing but great experiences at my local Apple Store.
If you look at the graph, satisfaction has remained steady, it hasn’t got dramatically worse, it’s actually improved since last year. As for Samsung, I question the amount of contact a typical Samsung customer has with the company. I have never seen a Samsung store and most people would rely on the third party retailer if they have issues.
The stores have been a mixed bag for me. But the products are getting crappier in quality, and they don’t seem to care. Almost everyone I know with an iPhone 5 has had the power button go bad right after the warrantee expires, but Apple doesn’t acknowledge the problem. Shoddy workmanship combined with denial will ruin Apple.
Dave, you don’t own an Apple product, do you.
I agree here.
Apple store employees need to do more for their $9.00/hr!
Wow, I love the way people take anecdotal experience and claim it’s evidence of a systemic problem. I have been to the Apple store a dozen times in the past two years and had nothing but good experiences. Several weeks ago I went in with my Retina MacBook Pro having serious problems, only to discover that dirt had gotten into the fan and jammed it, causing damaging overheating. I was afraid they would say that would not be covered by warranty, but three days later they gave it back to me, with a new logic board and a battery, as well as a new screen (mine had two bad pixels). Several months before that I took my iPhone 5 in to show them a barely visible spot that showed up on all my photos (in bright areas). The Apple employee looked at a couple photos, asked me if I had it backed up, walked away and a few minutes later handed me a brand new phone (not refurbished). I guess by this anecdotal information we should rather conclude that Apple has the most insanely great customer service in history and that Forrester research is just full of crap. At least that’s the same standard of evidence many here are using to trash Apple.
GOOD! Apple Retail did nothing for me when my year old MacBook drive exploded. All Apple’s fault, and eventually recalled. What a gong show that was.
When pigs fly….
I don’t get it… Are there Sony and Samsung stores all over the world I don’t know about? Seems to be comparing Apples to oranges. The three questions make sense but it certainly doesn’t equate everything about a great shopping experience. Like meeting your needs, of course Amazon will score higher, they sell everything ever made…
you know who used to have fantastic and outstanding customer support ? DELL! No joke. I was astonished how helpful they were, but this was at least 10 years ago and I have no idea if they still are any good. I’ve heard they cut corners everywhere as they’ve slowly gone down the tube.
The stores are too small.
They *were* fine in size but the customer base has shot up (iPhone, iPad users…) and Apple has not moved or expanded stores better deal with the extra traffic.
Our Apple Store used to be a nice place to visit, just for fun. Now it’s almost perpetually crowded, far too noisy and not a patch on the Micros**t stores I’ve seen, which have twice the space for a tenth of the customers. O_o
I believe some of this is a matter of EXPECTATION. As an Apple products user, I expect their products to be outstanding. If I have a dislike I often express it in via feedback to Apple. Many times I got a response back from Apple.
I am retired, but when I was working and force to use MS and their gang of PC makers, I just ignored all the issues because I knew no one was listening.
Do you suppose Lexus and BMW owners have higher expectations than Kia owners? Not that Kia is bad…but the customers expectations are not as high.
I just sent and received back my iPhone 5 to and from Apple for AppleCare service. The experience was less than stellar, including having a rep argue with me there was no way I could recognize that the phone I received back was my original phone, not a replacement. I was also not informed by anyone at Apple to remove my SIM card before sending them the phone, which caused me issues with my carrier.
Fun…not.
iOS 7 is an unmitigated disaster.
It has turned my ipad 2 into a slow white hospital sterilized ugly piece of shit.