Top 5 Customer Service Lessons I Learned from Apple Support
Autor: Lilian Arruda | Publicado: 2015-06-07T19:47:00-07:00


I was never one of those Apple fans. Till the day my laptop (an HP) got retired and I got the chance of trying a Macbook Pro. I took my time to consult some friends and family about the apple experience. Trying to figure out what’s so fancy about it and why it would really worth the price.



One thing was common, they would all talk about the so called Apple Experience - from the user experience in its elements, till the support, durability, and all this things people usually talk about Apple.



So, I decided to buy my own Mac and also live this Magic World.



When it arrived I was so happy about it that even though it was important to notice a dent in its corner, I didn’t complain. My Mac turned on just well and I entered the magic world with no problems. So excited I was that I didn’t care about the fabric dent.



11 months later, I tried to turn on my laptop and it didn’t work at all, no sound, no sign of life. Since it was still on the terms of guarantee, I took it to the only assistence in Florianópolis, called Tech Masters. then my saga begins. At all it took me almost 30 days to solve my problem. My fairyland became a quest for my rights. A quest that actually people told me would be one of my least problems by acquiring an Apple product.



I work as Customer Success manager, daily I have to deal with lots of challenging situation and try my best to give good experiences to my clients, or minimize the impact of unpredictable challenges. Since Apple is indeed a reference for customer services, now, living it by customer’s reality, I’d like to tell my Top 5 key learning from its support (at least by the Authorized Stores):









1. Do not respect guarantee rights and pretend all your customers are throwing money, just because they have your product.



You know customer usually don’t like to read things, right? So get any chance you have to take away from them the right they have of a free of charge repair (like a dent). Since you are just an authorized, I bet it’s not worthy for you. Don’t evaluate well the problem - by the end of the day, you have an expensive product, your client might as well always have some $800 to spend randomly (careful here, they might get to read the terms and find out you are trying to fool them, but that’s another thing).



2.&nbsp;Give inaccurate information about your service



First step didn’t work, try to give some random combination of words that would justify the situation. You are the expert, right? So they must trust your word. Get some fancy ones together that hide some nonsense explanation, like, for example, saying that a dent in the products corner affected you power button and that is making your whole operational system respond slower than usual. Say it fast and try to justify again why you need to charge something in a free service.



3. Reply only when it’s extremely needed, just for usual firefighting



You have so many things to do. No need and trying to be quick in your response. Set no expectation, nor give a clear communication channel that your clients can track what’s going on. It’s even better to follow this path when there’s also no clear way to find the national or international ombudsman to complain about you. But be careful, clients might get noisy - just if they start complaining in facebook or other channels it’s time to get in touch.



4.&nbsp;Make them wait, and wait more, that will educate them



You are the king of the castle. They need you, not the opposite. Take your time to watch them chase their own tails. Make them come and go. Everybody is equal and must wait, even after coming to you 5 times and wait for your service for almost a month. It’s not your fault not prioritizing well and making the situation come to this point, after all, you have so much to do, right?



5. By the end of the day, always try to push them to buy something extra



It’s important also to learn when you lose a battle, sometimes even executing all your previous points you might get a Budha customer that still has the patience to disagree and complain. It’s ok, but you can also try to offer some special payment condition (careful, that might also trigger some special rage in your Budha client).



Now, as a customer, my key lesson is:

Be rude, make noise, be one of those unpleasant people you won’t like to attend - that will guarantee that at least things will get done quick.









Thanks Apple, to make me realize how we can easy get wrong how to prioritize in our support. It’s easy to commit the mistake of just being firefighters instead of customer success warriors. And that’s how easy it’s possible to educate customers in the most dangerous way. By just making an extra effort for those who will disturb our reign, and forget to compensate those who are still forming their experience with us and might be our warriors as well.



As a professional, I think this situation helped me a lot to improve my points of view.




As a customer, I’ll not recommend to anyone in that same decision point I was when bought my Macbook to ever acquire an Apple Product.