An Apple a Day
Posted by Dave Capuano on Mon, Jun 06, 2011
Until six months ago, I lived in a household of PC users…..but after my wife’s last computer crashed (again) we decided to take the plunge into the world of the iMac. Apple is legendary for their products and the loyalty that is generated behind them. My wife runs her own business and her machine is mission critical, so we took a lot of precautions such as synching key documents to MobileMe and backing up to the iMac’s Time Machine. With our new shiny iMac, we were all set.
Then one day I walked into my wife’s office and watched her work on the six-month old work of art. While I was chatting with her about the kids I heard her very expensive iMac start to “click”. I asked her how long that had been going on because it didn’t sound right. She turned to me and gave the usual technical answer...“a while”. So, while she was traveling for business, I decided to get it fixed and made an appointment at the Genius Bar in Reston, Va. I won’t bore you with the details but let me just say that when I heard “hard drive” and “crash” I wasn’t a happy camper. However, that is where the Reston team’s training and experience kicked in. The team was focused on making the customer experience positive. While I wasn’t thrilled that I had to have the hard drive of my six-month old iMac replaced, the process itself was clean, professional, modern and helpful. Coupled with the backup and restoration application Time Machine, getting up and running was a snap.
Thanks to people like Nancy Porte (@nporte on twitter), our VP of Customer Experience, I’m now trained to think in terms of the customer’s perspective – the first step in the customer’s journey. To provide customers with exceptional experiences, companies need to understand several things:
- Customer perspective: What do customers think about our current interactions? Are they satisfied?
- Customer processes: How do customers interact with you over time?
- Customer needs: What do our customers want during each interaction? How do they want to feel and be treated?
Nancy lives and breathes understanding customer interactions and now I know why. When I walked up to that Genius Bar, how I was treated as a customer was my most important interaction. It was going to shape my brand perception of Apple. For our Voice of the Customer program at Vovici, Nancy has mapped out the customer journey and determined “Moments of Truth”. These are the interactions that impact brand perception. No matter how you define them they become the priorities for measuring, analyzing, acting on and monitoring the customer’s experience. In my case, Apple passed with flying colors!
If you want to learn more about Vovici’s Customer Experience Wheel click here to read a previous blog or here to register for a recorded webinar.