The Apple Experience: Secrets to Building Insanely Great Customer Loyalty (9 page)

“Leaders who solicit opinions from people who disagree with them are smart enough to realize that they do not have all the answers,”
¹
says leadership consultant John Baldoni. “Such leaders also must make it safe for others to disagree: otherwise the exercise is moot.” Baldoni recommends that companies hire employees who exhibit “character.” In Baldoni’s definition, character is a willingness to do what’s right for the team and the courage to stand up for ideas. Apple certainly looks for character. Steve Jobs admonished his employees not to do what they think “Steve would do” but to do what’s right for the team. Apple managers also look for people who can stand up for their ideas, who could go toe-to-toe with Steve Jobs because they must be brave enough to voice their opinions. The Apple experience doesn’t work without feedback. Steve Jobs believed so much in feedback—internal and external—he would periodically pick up the phone at Apple customer care. He wanted to hear directly from customers about their frustrations. Jobs didn’t believe the customer was always right. In fact, he could shoot down a customer with a pointed word or phrase. But more often than not, Jobs sought feedback, listened, and like any good leader, acted on that feedback. He saw feedback as a gift.

Feedback is a critical component behind Apple’s customer service excellence.
Feedback
is one of the most common words that I hear from Apple Store employees. Apple managers cultivate an open-door policy where employees feel comfortable and empowered to make comments and suggestions. But it works both ways. Employees and managers must be fearless in their pursuit of feedback. For example, after making a sale, a typical (nonfearless) employee would unlikely ask for feedback, and if he did, he might ask a meek question such as, “How did I do?” This typically leads to an equally empty, unsatisfying, and uninstructive answer: “Fine.” A fearless employee will dig deeper: “Where did I miss an opportunity? On a scale of 1 to 10, where do I rank in terms of customer engagement? Did I do everything possible to create a customer for life?”

Feedback is best given when the interaction is still fresh in everyone’s mind. Not always, but frequently, it is given soon after a sales transaction in an Apple Store. Managers will ask probing questions to help employees build better quality relationships with customers. They will ask questions such as, “What was the experience like? What did you miss? How could the transaction have been different?” Managers are not expected to hold a customer service training class after every transaction, but simply asking these questions will help an employee be present the next time she’s with a customer.

The immediate feedback loop can help any brand create a richer, more satisfying experience between staff and customers. The Apple philosophy applies to any business, in any industry. For example, most employees working behind the counter of an ice cream store want nothing more than to scoop an ice cream into a cone and get the customer on his way before it melts. But a fearless feedback loop will greatly improve the quality of the employee’s next interaction.
The Apple approach would be for the manager to ask probing questions of the employee: “What other experiences did you introduce to the customer? Did you ask, ‘What do you normally order when you come here?’ Did you recommend anything based on the customer’s requests or desires?” This feedback could lead to a richer experience because the frontline employee will be more involved in building relationships. The next conversation might go like this:

Employee:
Welcome to Yummy Ice Cream. We’re glad you’re here.

Customer:
It’s hot out there! I’m not surprised that you have a line out the door.

Employee:
It sure is. I hear it’s going to be close to 100 degrees today. We certainly have some great flavors to help cool you down. Tell me, what’s your favorite ice cream?

Customer:
I know it’s simple, but I really like vanilla.

Employee:
Awesome. I love vanilla, too. Have you tried Cherries Jubilee? It’s a vanilla-based ice cream with a twist—we add chocolate and cherries. Not only that, it’s served in our waffle cones, which are unique because we make them all by hand every morning, right here in the store.

Customer:
Sounds good. I’m not a huge fan of cherries, but I like the idea of chocolate and the waffle cone. Let’s do that. Thanks.

At this point it won’t matter to the customer that the ice cream treat he did buy cost three dollars more than the vanilla cone. He did learn something new, his eyes were opened to a new flavor combination, and he enjoyed the relationship that began to form, just in a few short seconds.

We will discuss “probing” questions in Part II, but for now just pay attention to the fact that the employee in the ice cream example connected a recommendation to the customer’s likes. The employee didn’t say, “Oh, you like vanilla. Have you tried mocha?” The same applies to the auto industry. If a car buyer walks in and starts talking about her three children and family trips, an astute car salesman won’t point her to a two-seater turbo. When I walked into an Apple Store to shop for a new iPod, the specialist didn’t try to sell me a
Macbook Air. But he did introduce me to the iPod Touch because after asking probing questions, he learned that I like some music apps like Pandora. The iPod Touch, he said, would give me all the benefits and apps of an iPhone, without the phone. The Apple specialist had learned—through training and constant feedback—how to create an enriching experience for his customer.

In another situation, I entered an Apple Store specifically to purchase a new notebook computer. The Specialist who worked with me, “Carla,” was one of the most enthusiastic people I had ever encountered at any retail store. Carla was a middle-aged woman who was clearly a free spirit. She had a purple streak in her hair and wore a beret. She made the buying experience a real pleasure. Of course, the journalist in me came out, and I asked her as many questions as she asked me.

“How long have you been working here?” I asked.

“Only six months.”

“Did you work in another retail store? A technology company?” I asked. “You seem to know a lot about operating systems.”

“It’s funny,” she said. “I had never worked in retail, and I didn’t know much about computers. But I
loved
Apple products. I had taken some One to One classes, and my goal is to be a Creative (Creatives are the instructors who teach personalized classes in the store). I remember there were about one hundred people in my first interview. A few were arrogant and thought they’d nail the job because they knew so much about Apple products. But Apple is different. They weren’t looking for technical knowledge. They hire for passion and personality. I’m really proud to work for a company that cares about its customers.”

“I can see that,” I responded. “You could have fooled me. I would have thought that you’ve been selling Apple products your whole life.”

“I’ve been here six months, and I still get feedback every day. We have discussions at the end of every shift. I’ll tell them all about this lovely interaction. Thanks for coming in and making my day!”

Carla made me feel good. I had a smile on my face, and I couldn’t believe how outgoing and friendly she was. Carla represents the next generation of customer service. But if it wasn’t for the consistent feedback Carla—a Specialist—received from her manager,
her natural friendliness would not have been channeled into creating a strategic advantage in the industry.

One reason why Apple scores higher than most other retailers on every metric (visitors, revenue per square foot, employee retention, etc.) is feedback. Interestingly, when you ask the casual Apple Store customers why they were satisfied with their experience, they will rarely, if ever, mention the word
feedback
. Conduct a Twitter search for Apple and customer service, and you will find dozens of enthusiastic customers who are sharing their positive experiences with friends on their larger social networks. Add the word
feedback
to the search term and no results will show up. Yet feedback is Apple’s under-the-hood philosophy that guides nearly everything Apple does, and it’s a key component in cultivating an engaging team.

Apple uses the Net Promoter Score (NPS) to “monitor the employee and customer experience and to identify and address where we can better serve.”
²
The NPS score measures engagement. Studies have consistently shown that companies with higher levels of employee and customer engagement outperform their peers on the stock market and other metrics of financial success. But recall from the earlier Gallup research that a full 70 percent of employees in the United States are either “not engaged” or “fully disengaged.”
³

In 2003, Fred Reichheld, a partner at Bain & Company, created a new way to measure customer relationships. He called it the Net Promoter Score. But as thousands of companies adopted the score, they expanded it, customized it, or improved the methodology. The result is an NPS that thousands of companies, including Apple, use to measure customer loyalty and to transform their organizations.

Companies like Apple use NPS to ask two important questions, one aimed at internal “customers”—employees—and the other at external customers. The question asked of employees is “On a 0-to-10
scale, how likely is it that you would recommend us as a place to work?”
⁴
The question asked of customers—the ultimate question to gauge customer engagement—“On a 0-to-10 scale, how likely is it that you would recommend us (or this product/service/brand) to a friend or colleague?” Respondents to these questions fall into three categories:

NPS is measured by taking the percent of customers who are promoters (
P
) and subtracting the percentage who are detractors (
D
).

P – D
= NPS

The average company sputters along with an NPS rating of 5 to 10 percent (some even have negative ratings, which means there are more detractors than promoters). Many brands admired for their
service, like Southwest Airlines, fall in the 60 percent range. But the real standouts—net promoters—such as Apple, Amazon, Costco, Trader Joe’s, or USAA in the financial services industry, push the NPS score to more than 80 percent. That’s the equivalent word-of-mouth of nine people talking up the service to their friends while only one person is feeling let down. I’ve talked to individual Apple managers who say they only want to see nine or ten. Anything less is considered a failure and requires corrective action immediately.

Apple has been using the NPS feedback loop for years to improve the way they do business—to create a team of employees who love working for the company and to cultivate a group of loyal customers who sing their praises. Everyone is focused on one goal: treat customers so well those customers become loyal promoters of the brand. “NPS was a natural fit for Apple,”
⁶
said former Apple head of retail Ron Johnson. “It has become part of the DNA of our retail stores.” If you start with the ultimate question, it will influence your hiring decision. “You will begin with people who care about a customer’s heart, not just their pocketbook,” according to Johnson.

When Ron Johnson and Steve Jobs began bouncing around the idea of a retail store, there were no computer retailer stores to compare. They had all failed miserably. Remember that when Apple opened its first store, the iPod was still in development and the Macbook, iPhone, and iPad were years away. So to get people in the door, Apple had to rely on giving people an experience that would enrich their lives. The stores wouldn’t just sell computers. They would inform, illuminate, and inspire. They would create such a delightful interchange between the employees and customers that the customers would hardly be able to contain their excitement and would spread the word. Apple customers would be its best sales force. Johnson embraced NPS to measure how successful Apple was creating customer advocates.