“For Apple, there may be a downside to success. Sales of the Cupertino (Calif.) company’s Macintosh machines are growing three times as fast as the overall PC market. Its iPod music player is burying the competition. And the stylish iPhone is setting the wireless industry on its head. But as Apple pulls in millions more customers with different kinds of products, it’s getting harder to keep them all happy,” BusinessWeek reports.
“‘The customer base is now more diverse, including students and mainstream consumers, and it’s harder to satisfy as a whole,’ says Lopo L. Rego, a marketing professor at the University of Iowa who studies the impact of customer satisfaction on financial performance,” BusinessWeek reports.
“Apple Inc. still tops all of the big measures of computer-customer service. But there are signs that it is vulnerable to the service struggles of other big companies. A widely watched study of customer satisfaction, released in August by the University of Michigan, showed Apple slipping 4 points from last year’s score, to 79 on a 100-point scale. That still leads the industry, but it’s the company’s first decline since 2001,” BusinessWeek reports.
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Daily Reader” for the heads up.]
As you sell more products to more people, it’s inevitable for problems to increase. Apple should work even harder to offset this phenomenon. The good news is that the new customers are usually coming from such inferior experiences (Windows, ugly PC hardware, also-ran MP3 players, portable CD players, bad software, also-ran online music outfits, etc.) that Apple is usually a revelation.
Got me one of them Mac Plus computers way back in the olden days – didn’t have a glossy screen nor iMovie 08. Didn’t have much of anything come to think of it. Not even a hard drive. Damn power supply gave out on the durn thing bout 18 months after I bought it.
That there’s the sum total of bad products I’ve owned, or anybody I know or care about has owned (that came from Apple Inc.) in the last 22 years.
Damn fine company!
Since Apple inc started sourcing its production abroad, China more speciffically, the reliablity of the components has not been as good as when they were made and assembled in the US.
The price for US made goods is prohibitive as opposed to Chinese made ones. Here in lies the conundrum.
Solution, Quality control in China Apple inc. style, this means that even though some machines may ship out faulty, not as many will be as faulty as the Dells & Smells of the competition.
Panacea? Exceptional customer service combined with a sensitive replacement policy.
Who needs a genius to tell you this? when you are already experiencing it.
Apple service is something I am not familiar with. Never had a problem.
I want to know why the author of this article felt it necessary to exaggerate the price of Catherine Temple’s iMac. The authors also imply that she only purchased a Mac because of the “buzz” she heard from friends. I tracked her down to a couple of posts on BusinessWeek’s Peter Burrow’s blog:
Is Apple’s Customer Satisfaction Slipping
In her two comments, she states she is NOT a new Apple buyer but a repeat buyer… and that she spent $3032 for her iMac, not $4000 as reported in this article. Was this not-so-subtle exaqgeration of the price deliberate or was the $32 over $3000 reason to round up?
MDN magic word “states”
“As you sell more products to more people, it’s inevitable for problems to increase.”
As you sell more products to non cutists who don’t just tick the highest marks in every survey regardless of the quality of service they actually receive, inevitably your scores come down to match the real level of service you provide.
“I can only speak for myself, but on the occasions I have needed Apple service, it has been excellent. My satisfaction with their products is likeswise high.”
Yet looking at your posts, more than half your Apple products have failed on you at some point. It’s nice that you feel good about Apple’s service, but If I’d had that many of a company’s products shit themselves on me or have problems, I’d be pretty unhappy.
You must be the prototypical cool aid drinking Apple fanboy to put up with that many problems and still love the company.
“and to be pushed aside to help a newbie, meh”
Maclover, more like narcissistic self lover (combined with cult of Apple worshipper).
Called support yesterday, Friday, about an issue on my MacBook Pro 17″ – didn’t realize it was 14 days out of warranty..
Apple’s response: “No problem – we’ll fix it for you – a box for you to send it to us will arrive Monday”..
Apple cares…
C
an ipod shuffle, bought in the us, but inherited by my brother in asia, was replaced free 5 days out of warranty in that country. The local apple reseller had said “sorry, hard luck”, but a call to apple resulted in his picking up the new ipod shuffle sent by apple at the very same reseller.
I always have to distrust any survey where there is only a 4-5 point spread over 100 points.
The last survey that i saw gave apple 90% approval over the nearest pc at about 75%. I trust those numbers more.
en
I’m a Mac user since the beginning and have had good luck with most of my Macs, with only a few having issues.
With that said, I think Apple could learn a lot from Dell.
Now, the truth is that with the cheap commodity hardware Dell uses, it’s very important to have free, immediate, on-site replacement. But, if Dell can afford to do it, Apple can too.
“But, if Dell can afford to do it, Apple can too.”
Sure, why not, both use exactly the same hardware inside. With the much higher price Apple gets for the same stuff, they should have more money in the pot to provide as timely service as Dell does.
Just wanted to share with you an interesting experience I had this morning with Apple. I should preface this by saying I’ve been a huge Mac fan since 1984, and am currently a small business (actually non-profit) owner with 4 iMacs, 2 MacBooks, a Powerbook, an iPhone, and 3 airport routers. And I’m a stockholder. And all my customer service experiences up to now have been great.
We’re trying to find out if we need to order Leopard Server for our business to get more robust calendar-sharing than we’ve had with Tiger (the individual license). I called Apple Sales, and was told “I don’t really know much about the difference between the server and the other product.” Period. Silence. I said “perhaps you can transfer me to someone who does know?”.
Then Bob transfered me to tech support, at which an automated system wanted to know which product I was calling about. Turns out that “O S Ten” (OSX) and “Leopard” are not recognized as products by the system, so I said “iMac” just to get through.
After 3 minutes, I was connected to Tara, who told me “we don’t know anything about Leopard at this point and we’re not allowed to say.” I commented that it seemed odd that Apple was not able to provide sales support information for a product that they were ALREADY selling on their website. I asked if I could speak to a supervisor.
After 5 more minutes on hold, Stacey, the supervisor, told me that they couldn’t comment on Leopard because they had not received any training about it. I again noted that it was a bit odd to start selling something before training your sales and tech staff about it (can you imagine this happening with the iPhone?). Stacey told me there was nothing she could do. I said, “ok, thank you, though” and waited for a goodbye but realized that Stacey had already hung up the phone.
That really felt more like a Dell customer service experience and, if typical, bodes poorly for Apple.