What Is The Important For Customer Service Apple

Apple's customer satisfaction and loyalty have been growing steadily over the years, reflecting the way consumers view the brand. Co-ordinate to NPS Benchmarks, Apple's NPS score in 2022 is a resounding 72, which is significantly college than the average NPS score of the consumer electronics manufacture.

Apple tree's continual focus on improving its Internet Promoter Score has produced significant results for the visitor. In 2007, its NPS was a respectable 58. As of 2016 through 2017, the company had an NPS of 72 – one of the highest in the applied science industry – following a decrease in 2018 to a score of 63.

And, although their NPS seemed at risk due to the pandemic, as well-nigh companies took a considerable striking, Apple was more than than ready to keep upwardly with client expectations and stay on top of their heed – registering a record fiscal year in 2020.

The company not but managed to excel at creating an omni-channel client experience, but to also give back to the community, for example by partnering with Google on the Covid-19 contact tracing technology . Apple tree made sure to be shut to their customers at all times and meet the new challenge with the same inventiveness and passion. Hence, the brand was granted an NPS score of 72 in 2022 – NPS which streamed confidently upwards over the past three years.

Why is Apple's Net Promoter Score important, y'all ask? Because NPS is related to a company's growth and customer retention levels. The score showcases how many people are happy with your brand, and how many actually promote it. And if they do the latter, it's safe to assume those people are loyal customers.

What Are the Reasons Behind Apple's NPS?

Understanding what led to Apple having such a high NPS tin give you an idea of what you could focus on to achieve similar results.

Apple's NPS score isn't a coincidence, after all. Information technology's the result of an incredible focus on delivering a great product and an exceptional experience to customers – something Apple, as the globe's largest tech company, has turned into a streamlined procedure.

Apple'south Internet Promoter Score is very high for a visitor in its industry, simply information technology's not unattainable for other brands. By understanding why and how Apple achieves high customer loyalty, you tin create a process that improves customer satisfaction in your own company.

Whether you run a applied science business or have an unrelated brand and want to acquire from Apple's amazing success, the factors beneath can aid y'all improve your customer loyalty and retention:

1. A Focus on Relieving Purchasing Anxiety

Ane of the most frequent reasons customers don't purchase something – especially an expensive or unique production – is anxiety near whether or not it will work equally it should. Concerns that getting an answer from the company might be hard if the production doesn't piece of work properly likewise come into play.

Apple neutralizes this anxiety through its client service, letting clients know that for any production they buy, they'll receive the support they need to its fullest. Brian Ten. Chen, New York Times, pointed this out, arguing that any product review is worthless without an understanding of the company'due south customer service. Customers are making the purchase based not just on the quality of a product, but on the quality of the service that accompanies it.

For one, the company offers a ane-year warranty on all its products, and besides offers to repair the products at no extra charge, or replace them with a complimentary product if they malfunction during the warranty period.

On pinnacle of that, buying from Apple also doesn't feel like a risky experience to people but because of the huge network of retail stores Apple operates. If there are any issues with their production, people know they tin can easily brand a reservation at their local Genius Bar, and take the product in for support.

Besides that, Apple tree customers also know they can rely on Apple tree-authorized service providers and Apple Repair Centers if the Genius Bar just isn't an option.

Apple'southward Support Page helps with this likewise. Information technology contains tons of straightforward self-help content. For some people, reading an article is a much easier task than connecting with client service reps.

The company also introduced the Apple Back up App offering customers personalized access to solutions for all their Apple tree products and services – the "all for one" app as some of the users define it. Customers tin can hands manage their subscriptions, reset the Apple ID password or troubleshoot an issue with a real person if they can't notice a clarification that explains their pain signal.

All of that has a huge positive affect on relieving purchasing anxiety, which somewhen ends up contributing to Apple tree'due south NPS.

ii. An Obsessively High Attention to Details

Apple doesn't just stick to offering quality and reliable products. The visitor goes the actress mile and pays a ton of attending to the smallest details.

And consumers observe that. In fact, if you google "Apple attention to details," you'll come beyond tons of articles talking near the brand'southward "fanatical" and "insane" obsession with details.

Here are just some examples to prove you lot what we mean:

The Apple Pencil's weight is distributed in such a way as to ensure that no matter which mode it's placed, information technology always rolls over to display the word "pencil." Its weight distribution too reduces its momentum when rolling, thus reducing the risk of it rolling off the tabular array.
Pretty much all Apple notebooks have a slight indentation in the area right below the trackpad to make information technology easier for Apple users to open the laptop with only one hand.
Newer Mac laptops feature a "smart" fan. Basically, when a user engages the vocalism dictation feature, the internal fan's speed is automatically slowed downwards a scrap so that the laptop can better hear the user speaking.
MacBook Air and newer MacBook Pro devices accept a "smart Caps Lock" characteristic. Apple essentially prevents adventitious Caps Lock keystrokes by requiring users to hold the Caps Lock central a bit longer for information technology to turn on.

Apple'southward attending to detail goes beyond the products, into the packaging and the experience that'due south attached to information technology. The company doesn't just deliver the purchased items in standard cardboard packaging – information technology goes in a higher place and across and puts just as much attention to detail into its packaging every bit information technology does into every product.

How much attention, yous ask? Consider this – the company has a dedicated packaging designer who spends months opening prototype boxes fabricated by Apple's designers. A lot of testing goes into making the packaging a joyful experience for the customer.

The event of this is that ownership and opening an Apple product is a sensory experience. From the first interaction with an Apple product – in this case, opening the box – customers take a sense of Apple's attention to detail and design philosophy.

This relatively pocket-size cistron can accept a big effect on purchases, as it might help the company stand out from its competitors past delivering a unique feel to its customers.

This experience is closely linked to the product itself. The sensory response of opening up the box and first using the product is an issue that customers subconsciously remember each time they employ an Apple production.

Going forward, no compromises are ever made when it comes to Apple tree Stores as well. Steve Jobs' belief was that "details thing, and it'south worth waiting to get it right". For example, the team due south pent 3 months developing the stainless steel wall panels that commencement appeared in Stanford stores, managing to go what seemed incommunicable – a matte surface reflective.

Ane of the Apple's strengths is best expressed through a simple rule:"Sell an experience, not a product."

Buying, opening, and using an Apple tree product is a memorable experience for people, not just a consumerist trend – which is a major factor that influences Apple'southward NPS.

Yet, what 1 must non forget is that a unique customer feel relies on the people that are backside Apple tree'south products and services. Hence, the company makes sure to instill this approach to excellence to its staff through every determination.

Apple tree'southward new campus is a unique example in this respect – a technical curiosity that embodies the company'south values. The project received much criticism due to its grandiosity, but every bit Tim Cook explained: "Could we have cut a corner here or there? It wouldn't have been Apple. And information technology wouldn't take sent the message to everybody working here every day that particular matters, that care matters ."

3. A focus on employee satisfaction

If you're not familiar with eNPS, it stands for Employee Net Promoter Score, and it's a derivative of the NPS methodology. The surveys work pretty much the same style, but instead of focusing on customer satisfaction, they focus on employee satisfaction.

Basically, eNPS helps you discover out how happy your employees are working at your company, and how likely they are to recommend your business as a working place to others.

Why is that relevant? Because happy, satisfied employees are productive employees! Co-ordinate to research, happy employees are xx% more productive than their unhappy counterparts. And that boost was achieved past just spending $2/person on snacks and drinks!

Plus, companies with engaged employees outperform businesses without engaged employees by a whopping 202%. What'due south more, companies with highly engaged employees tin encounter a acquirement growth of around 2.five times that of their competitors – non to mention high employee appointment tin likewise reduce expensive staff turnover past approximately 40%.

And if your employees are happy and productive, your customers will be satisfied besides. If employees are unhappy, eNPS lets you know nearly that and so you can take action.

At present, Apple was actually one of the first companies to adopt eNPS. Apple began surveying their ain employees every four months to detect out how likely they would be to recommend the store as a place to work.

The company recognized the importance of employees being Promoters themselves. Afterward all, simply an employee who truly believes the service they are selling is the all-time in the marketplace can turn a customer into a Promoter.

The eNPS score is calculated the same style equally the NPS score, with the full ranging betwixt -100 and 100. Apple'south eNPS score in 2022 seems to be 19, taking a pace back from an eNPS score of 25, registered in 2018. That might not seem impressive, only it'south actually a pretty good score, given that eNPS is ordinarily lower than NPS since employees are stricter critics than customers.

But how does Apple achieve high employee appointment?

Here are a few things the company does to go on employees happy and motivated:

When employees piece of work in teams, rewards are applied to team performance.
Apple created a culture of fandom at piece of work past letting employees use company products regularly, giving them discounts, and even some products as gratis gifts to them.
Apple offers employees regular preparation sessions to amend their skills and help them develop better ideas. What's more, the company created a corporate academy designed to instruct its employees in the various aspects of the company'due south engineering and culture, preparing the next generation of Apple leaders. Although there is niggling data on the available courses, some of them would focus on: Communicating at Apple, Project Management, Vendor Management, What Makes Apple, Apple tree. Employees can sign upwardly for courses relevant for their positions on a voluntary basis.
At Apple, employee contributions are not measured past how long they worked at the company, but by how many projects an employee has worked on. Likewise, the best ones are always rotated between electric current projects.
Apple employees tin can get a raise without a promotion. For example, a designer could get a raise without being promoted to a team director if information technology's not the kind of job they'd be practiced at or happy doing. Apple focuses on having people practise the jobs they are best suited for.
Apple introduced new channels of communication, like the "Hi" app delivering daily a summary of the demand-to-know information for retail employees. Some other example is the "Loop" app which enables peer-to-peer communication and learning by exchange of best practices.
The make invests in building an surround for their employees that reflects Apple tree values and that would inspire them to friction match the effort in the products they create and the customer service they provide.

With over 500 retail stores worldwide and 154,000 employees every bit of 2021, keeping such a big team constantly engaged and loyal to the visitor'due south values might seem an incommunicable task to attain. Yet, Apple tree has consistently proven the opposite, the company always being recurrent on the Superlative companies to work for charts.

4. Unique Client Experiences

It was predicted that by 2020, customer experience would overtake toll and product when it comes to brand differentiation on the market place – which really turned true years past.

Withal, Apple was more than prepared for this shift. A simple Google search is plenty to reveal how many Apple customers are pleased with the unique experiences the brand offered them – like replacing a phone for free because a customer waited too long for the trouble to be diagnosed, or replacing a month-quondam reckoner with a make new one because a key was depressed for someone who was going to higher.

This kinds of experiences are usually a effect of Apple'south 5 steps of service (the acronym for those steps is actually APPLE). The quaternary step ("Mind for and resolve issues or concerns") encourages employees to become to know their customers better and then that they can offering them a higher degree of convenience and personalization.

The fact that convenience is important is a no-brainer, just what near personalization? Well, co-ordinate to research, 51% of consumers expected that – by 2020 – companies would manage to anticipate their needs, and make relevant suggestions based on that. Four years past, the research accounted for 66% of customers expecting companies to sympathise their unique needs and expectations. As well, increasing personalization on more channels can increase consumer spending by effectually 500%.

Apple doesn't but deliver personalization in the grade of unique customer service. The brand'southward services are usually highly oriented towards offering users a personalized experience.

For instance, Apple Music uses personalization to pick the best soundtracks for every user. Apple also utilizes user info like purchase and download history to make what they call "Personalized Recommendations" on the App Shop and iBooks Store.

Customer feedback plays an important office in user-oriented personalization too. For Apple, feedback is clearly of import, given they arrive very piece of cake (and also encouraging) for customers to go out feedback for most of their products and services.

5. A Articulate Understanding of the Power of Simplicity

" That's been one of my mantras – focus and simplicity. Simple tin can be harder than circuitous: Yous have to piece of work hard to get your thinking clean to make it uncomplicated." – Steve Jobs

Ane of the all-time means to provide consumers with a positive experience with your brand is to offer simplicity. Research backs that up too – consumers desire simpler, faster, and more seamless brand appointment.

Apple's emphasis on simplicity is immediately noticeable when you consider that near Apple services support single sign-on features. For instance, you tin can utilise your Apple ID to access all services hosted by Apple, which is much more than straightforward than having users keep track of multiple IDs to utilize different services.

Or you tin offset to work on a task on your MacBook, to and so end it on your iPad. The brand understands that it'south important to ensure continuity via a seamless feel beyond devices, and they are managing it pretty well given the complexity of the task.

Apple'due south focus on simplicity is too noticeable when you take their omnichannel back up into business relationship. Customers tin can become in touch with Apple'due south back up squad through live chat, email, or by phone. Simply that's not all – the company besides offers support on Twitter, and has a dedicated YouTube support channel too.

Apple also launched the Tips app – every bit the title implies – offering great tips and tutorials nigh different features, hence educating their users and then they can make the almost of the purchased product.

How does omnichannel back up contribute to high customer satisfaction, you ask?

Well, it seems that companies with omnichannel appointment strategies manage to retain around 89% of their customers, and 64% of consumers expect to receive real-time assistance regardless of the channel they use. Offering this type of support is more than likely to get your customers to promote your brand to others.

vi. A Brand Built on Innovation

Ane of Apple's biggest selling points is its unique hardware and software. The main reason they manage to offer products like that is considering they focus on innovation. By that, we don't mean they just create products that are new. They besides brand sure they are useful, they are likely to exist adopted, and that they will lead to change.

The AirPods and Apple Watch are cracking recent examples of the company'due south ability to introduce on the marketplace. What's more than, fifty-fifty though the AirPods were met with skepticism, Apple powered through it and delivered on their promises. And when users noticed problems with the production, they were quick to human action on that feedback.

On their path to innovation, Apple did encounter many difficulties and there were for certain faulty decisions that harmed their image. Amid them were the counterfoil of the AirPower Charger considering it could non leave-up to their standards or the butterfly MacBook keyboards that accept caused a lot of fizz. All the same, after trying to deliver on their promises just failing to, they could honestly admit they were wrong and focus their efforts on a new thought. They were aware that "sometimes when you lot innovate, yous make mistakes. It is best to acknowledge them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations." – Steve Jobs

The brand never ceased to progress. Apple was ever looking for new opportunities, new ideas, aiming to give customers not only what they want, but anticipating their needs. Hence, they were prepare to lose sight of the shore – of what was popular with many users, in lodge to be able to come up with better and bolder solutions. Today, 89% of successful businesses concur that predicting customer needs is disquisitional to growth.

Apple is one of the nearly innovative companies in the globe claiming 2,490 patent grants in the US in 2019. They are spending their biggest part of their acquirement on enquiry and development. Their expenses on research for 2021 were $21.914 billion , a sixteen.86% increment from 2020 – an upward-ward trend which started in 2003.

Is innovation tied to Apple's NPS, though?

Aye, it seems information technology is. According to research, 84% of consumers say it is somewhat important that the company they buy from is innovative. 75% of them would also exist likely to pay a premium price for innovation.

And if consumers are happy with the products they buy, they will probably recommend them to others, or just talk about them online. As a effect, those customers will virtually likely become Promoters for the make they similar, raising its NPS score.

Considering all of that, it's not hard to see how Apple tree's NPS score can get a boost from its innovative products.

7. Continued improvement of customer satisfaction

Contrary to the common belief that Apple doesn't like to mind to its customers, Apple was one of the outset large proponents of Net Promoter Score. Fred Reichheld's popular book, The Ultimate Question, explains how Apple used Net Promoter Score prior to 2006 to influence its practices.

Example of Apple Watch NPS survey — Example of Apple tree Sentry NPS survey

A focus on continually improving and increasing Net Promoter Score affects every level of piece of work at Apple, from the large motion-picture show to day-to-day store operations. Reichheld explains how Apple puts NPS to work in the management of its retail stores:

"Comments from customers help store managers prepare for service recovery calls with Detractors to shut the feedback loop. The outcomes of these calls, together with the customer comments, provide of import coaching and feedback messages that are passed along to employees."

NPS feedback is analyzed and provided to stores on a daily footing. Whenever Apple receives a poor score from a Detractor, the store manager follows up over the phone to clear up the effect inside 24 hours. The response is rapid, and it has serious positive results for Apple's ratings.

According to Reichheld'due south book, internal studies showed that Detractors whom Apple contacted within 24 hours were significantly more likely to buy Apple products in the future than Detractors that couldn't be reached. Apple worked out that each hour on the phone with a Detractor had a value of $1,000 in additional revenue for the company.

8. Focus on customer value, not coin

"In that location'south this matter in engineering, well-nigh a disease, where the definition of success is making the well-nigh. How many clicks did you get, how many active users practice y'all have, how many units did you sell? Everybody in applied science seems to want big numbers. Steve never got carried abroad with that. He focused on making the best." – Tim Cook

Inquiry by Deloitte and Touche found that customer-centric companies were lx% more profitable compared to companies that were not focused on the client.

If Apple'southward main focus was on making more money, they probably wouldn't have been so successful now. Instead, they focused on their customers and it has paid off.

Today, Apple is ane of the world's most successful and profitable engineering companies. It holds over 40% of the US smartphone market (46,nine% in 2021 to exist precise) and has a fantastical 87% brand loyalty across the Usa and Europe.

So call back less near profit and more about customer value. How your company and your product or service can create more value for your customers.

Find Out Your Company NPS

Apple tree is one of the world's biggest companies, and the tactics that information technology uses to mensurate its NPS might non be completely relevant for your business; however, the general strategy – a unique product backed upward past great client service – is something that any brand tin implement.

From Apple tree to other manufacture-leading companies, the best way to larn retentivity from big companies is to survey your customers, read their feedback and use information technology to ameliorate your product, service, and experience.

Having access to such data can aid you make amend decisions regarding how to arroyo customers, and which segments (Promoters, Passives, Detractors) you demand to focus on more at the moment.

While running NPS surveys can seem difficult if you don't take whatsoever experience with them, the reality is that they're quite easy to manage – if y'all utilize the correct NPS software, that is.

Well, Retently has got you covered – it lets you run automated NPS surveys, segment your customers to send targeted surveys, and utilise multiple survey channels (like email and in-app surveys). All-time of all – you can easily ready automation scenarios, run transactional NPS campaigns, and integrate our service with tons of useful platforms and tools.

Leave your email to become our monthly newsletter.