The Apple Experience: Secrets to Building Insanely Great Customer Loyalty (12 page)

Customer service associates need to put on their party hats and treat their next busy shifts like they are hosting a get-together in their home, to ensure their customers feel welcomed and satisfied when they leave. More times than not, though, associates freeze up when too many customers show up at the same time. The common response is no response. Vanessa recalled a recent visit to a large home improvement store where she stood with an inquiring expression near an associate who was talking with another customer for more than ten minutes before he acknowledged that she was waiting for help! (She would have sought another associate for help had there been one around.) Would you wait ten minutes to greet one of your party arrivals? Not if you’re a good host.

Some people are simply better at multitasking than others, but it is a skill that can be acquired and, in the real world, employers may not have the luxury to screen for customer service reps who are multitasking superstars. In her role as a tasting room manager, Vanessa quickly learned that if her employees were skilled at multitasking, customer satisfaction would rise, sales would go up, and bonuses would be bigger! Needless to say, it didn’t take the tasting room
team long to buy in. The system that Vanessa developed, based on fundamental psychological principles of human behavior, is similar to the Apple experience described earlier. Her three-step process that helped the tasting room’s sales soar is very simple. Rookies can adopt and use it to be more effective multitaskers when servicing more than one customer at a time: address, assess, assign.
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This first step is the most important. When customers see the room is filled with other customers and there are only a few customer service reps to service them all, they are patient and understanding
only
when the rep acknowledges their existence. If you are waiting on someone when a new customer arrives, you should stop within ten seconds (if possible) of their arrival to do three things: (1) smile, (2) lock eyes, and (3) verbally welcome this new customer.

Eye contact is critical. Remember when we discussed friendly and fearless employees? Unfriendly and timid employees do not make eye contact. A 2008 study in Seattle found that bank robberies declined when tellers were taught to provide better customer service.
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The program was called SafeCatch and taught employees to unnerve would-be bank robbers with eye contact, a smile, and a friendly greeting. Since bank robbers want to remain anonymous, they would leave the bank. I guess this is one case where turning off customers with a smile is a good thing!

An acceptable verbal remark to say to customers upon greeting them would be, “Thank you for coming in, I’ll be with you shortly.” An even better remark would be, “Thank you for coming in. I will be happy to help you today. Do you know what you are looking for?” This is a better response because it will give you more information to help you decide how quickly you can get to this person and determine what he or she needs. I recall a recent visit to a local large department store where I waited in line forever behind a customer who was arguing over a price on a sale item. The sales rep told me, “I’ll be right with you,” but all I needed to do was put something on hold so I could retrieve my wallet from the car. If she had said, “What do you need help with?” she would have learned that I didn’t
need much but for her to take my garment and put it aside. She could have done this easily while still dealing with the price whiner.

Now that you know what the customer needs, this is where step two comes in—assess the situation and determine the best strategy for keeping this customer content while you continue to help your existing customer. You should be able to identify one of four plans to execute:

The Specialist at the Apple Store who helped me with my MacBook Air purchase was not the first person who greeted me. She was assigned by the greeter because she worked at the MacBook table. When a second customer was also looking for service, my Specialist did not assign it to herself. She assigned the role to another Specialist. Only when the third customer approached us did my Specialist assign the task to herself because she knew she could handle it quickly. All the Specialists I encountered that day demonstrated this second but crucial step of the process brilliantly and smoothly.

The final step in this multitasking process is to execute (or assign) the plan you’ve identified as the best choice during your assessment. If a monitored wait time is indeed the best plan, then make the wait bearable for the customer. Offer a glass of water, a brochure, a seat to sit in, or whatever is relevant in your space and industry. Check in with your waiting customer every minute. Phrases like, “Thanks for waiting,” “I’m almost ready,” “Can I do anything while you wait?” are all acceptable check-in statements.

Effective multitasking is like playing chess. You won’t win the game if you focus only on each play at a time instead of strategizing what could happen if you make one move over another. Keep your eyes and mind open to the whole landscape. Anticipate and evolve your moves and strategy based on what is happening as well as what could happen. Addressing, assessing, and assigning a plan of action should take only less than a minute once you put it to practice, and when you do it successfully, your customers will love you for it. Make your customers—your guests—feel welcomed, entertained, and special, and never make them feel like they are unwanted. In return, you’ll win their hearts. They’ll roll with it because they get that a good host has to work the room, and you’ll feel confident and empowered in your customer service role.

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n Apple customer in Cardiff, Wales, Anna, once posted this Tweet to her three hundred friends: “Blown away by Apple customer service. Brand-new replacement iPad despite no insurance and the cracked screen being entirely my fault.” Anna’s experience is not unique. It happens quite often. It’s not secret inside information. Anyone who monitors Twitter can see it.

On the same day that Anna posted her experience, “Rob” tweeted, “My mom dropped her iPhone in water, fried the hardware, and the Apple Store gave her a brand new one on the spot.” When a customer buys an iPhone at the Apple Store, the device comes with a limited one-year warranty. It covers stuff that’s Apple’s fault—like defects in materials—and doesn’t cover the stuff that’s your fault—like “cosmetic damage’ ” (broken glass, dents) or damage caused by “accidents” or “liquid contact.” In other words, if you drop your new iPhone in the toilet, you’re out of luck, and Siri, the
iPhone 4S personal assistant, can’t help you. So how could Anna and Rob’s mom get their devices replaced? The answer will tell you everything you need to know about attracting, retaining, and motivating A-players, people at the top of their game.

Apple employees are not supposed to replace devices that have been accidentally dropped, dunked in water, or otherwise damaged due to the customer’s negligence. But sometimes they will replace devices that were dropped, dunked, and damaged if it’s
the right thing to do
. Apple employees are empowered to make the right decision, and sometimes replacing a computer or iPod that’s out of warranty is the most appropriate response. However, by the time you read this, I believe that this policy will be so well known that it wouldn’t surprise me if Apple has to become more selective with its replacement units.

Warranties are written in black and white, but Apple employees are empowered to make decisions in the gray area. They are trusted to make the right decision for the company and for the long-term relationship with a customer. If a customer brings in an iPhone that was accidentally dropped in a puddle, an employee at the Genius Bar might look up the customer’s history, and if he feels that replacing the device will restore the customer’s trust in the company, he will do so. The Genius’s role is not to fix computers. It’s to rebuild relationships. In the first ten years of the Apple Store, the company learned “a visit to the Genius Bar can fix more than computers; it can restore a customer’s relationship with Apple.”
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Compare this philosophy to other retailers. A friend who works as an assistant manager at a department store says she is “empowered” to give a customer a $20 gift card if the company messed up in some way. At least that’s what employees are told. The truth is harder to come by. The department store’s employees must get mul
tiple levels of permission, all the way up to district manager. Since my friend’s district manager takes days to respond to a phone call or e-mail, she knows that offering a $20 gift certificate is fruitless. So she doesn’t.

Now don’t expect to just walk into an Apple Store and get your broken device replaced because you read it in this book. Remember, Apple hires “fearless” employees. If you show up and demand a replacement because you heard that someone else had a device replaced, an employee will probably remind you about the warranty and what it covers. Apple employees treat customers with respect, but fearless employees command respect in return. Now you know what’s behind a Tweet such as this one: “Apple Store responded to my screen-shattered, out-of-warranty iPhone 4 by handing me a new one. Customer service so high it’s embarrassing.” Empower your employees to embarrass themselves every now and then.

Empowered employees have higher levels of “engagement,” meaning they are emotionally connected to their jobs and dedicated to providing the highest customer service. But as we’ve discussed, most employees are uninspired and disengaged. Less-engaged employees are more likely to leave an organization, leading to rising turnover costs, lower productivity, and growing disruptions.
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I’m not sure how companies with disengaged employees can even stay in business. They will certainly never offer Apple-style customer service. Commentators praise Apple’s success in retail by citing foot traffic, design, products, or the patented circular glass staircase. All of these items are important, but Apple’s success begins with empowered and engaged employees who truly believe they are changing the world. If you don’t get your internal customer right, you’ll never do right for the customer.