The Apple Experience: Secrets to Building Insanely Great Customer Loyalty (20 page)

“Was your life enriched by our Apple experience?” I asked Patty.

“Yes, it was,” Patty confirmed.

“When you fill out the e-mail survey that Apple will send, will you say that you would recommend Apple to someone else?”

“Yes, definitely,” Patty responded.

That’s what matters to Apple.

Apple employees talk benefits, not features. Apple dedicated itself to communicating benefits with the opening of its first store in 2001. At the time retailers were finding opportunities to talk to their customers less; Apple decided to talk to their customers more. “We found ways to strike up a conversation at every possible opportunity. We talk while they play with products on the tables. And when they join us for a workshop. These conversations have taught us that customers love our products, but what they really want is to make a scrapbook out of family photos. They want to make a movie about their kid. Or a website about traveling across the country.”
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Steve Jobs wasn’t passionate about computers. He was passionate about building elegantly designed and simple-to-use tools that would help people unleash their personal creativity. The most effective Apple employees—and the best salespeople in any company for
that matter—focus on the needs of the customers and how the product or service will improve their lives.

When I walked into the Apple Store near the Paris Opera—one of the most beautiful Apple Stores in the world—I asked a specialist named Philippe about the new iPhone 4S that had recently been introduced.

“Philippe, why should I get one of these new phones instead of sticking with the iPhone 4, which suits me just fine?” I asked.

“The iPhone 4S is our best phone yet,” he said. “It’s faster, has better graphics, and takes better photographs and video.” Not once did he mention the specs of the A5 chip, which makes it all possible, because Philippe knew that speeds and feeds don’t matter to most consumers as much as what those specs mean to their daily lives. I found it remarkable that 6,000 miles from Apple headquarters in Cupertino, California, a Specialist in France could communicate as clearly and effectively as sales floor Specialists in Apple’s Silicon Valley stores. Sell the benefit—every Apple employee gets the message.

Few people care that the iPhone 4S has a dual-core A5 chip. Technically speaking, the A5 chip “contains a rendition of a chip based upon the dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore CPU with NEON SIMD accelerator and a dual core PowerVR SGX543MP2 GPU.”
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Does the previous explanation inspire you to run out and buy a new phone today? Of course not. It’s not inspiring, because it’s not about you. It’s about the technology. Customers would never see such an explanation in Apple’s marketing material nor would they hear anything nearly as technical spoken by Apple Store employees. Instead, they might hear something similar to Philippe’s conversation: Our new A5 chip makes everything faster—browsing the web, going from app to app, gaming, and doing just about everything.

When Apple sent an e-mail to millions of customers introducing its new iPhone 4S, the first sentence of the e-mail said that the iPhone 4S was Apple’s most amazing iPhone yet. Why? Because of Siri, among the other features. Technically speaking, Siri is an intelligent software assistant and knowledge navigator application in iOS 5 that uses a natural language user interface to answer questions. The previous sentence is accurate, but far too technical to inspire must customers. It doesn’t answer the question, “Why
should I care?” Instead, Apple marketing material described Siri as, “The intelligent assistant you can ask to make calls, send texts, set reminders, and more.” Now that’s easy to understand, memorable, and compelling. It sells the benefit.

When I studied journalism at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, the first concept we were taught in Journalism 101 was to answer the question, “Why should your readers care?” The same technique applies to the conversation you have about your company, product, service, or cause. Nobody cares about the product as much as they care about what the product will do for them.

Apple Store employees are trained to sell the benefit behind Apple’s products, just as Steve Jobs did so brilliantly in his presentations. Jobs always answered the question, “Why should you care?” I now encourage my clients to have a clear and concise answer to that question and to train their sales staff to have the same answer as well. I recall working with the CEO of a medical device manufacturer to create the message behind his company’s revolutionary new CT scan machine.

“Can you tell me about the new machine?” I asked.

“It’s the world’s first dynamic volume CT scan that utilizes 320 ultra-high resolution rows to image an entire organ in a single gantry rotation,” the CEO said proudly.

“Let me rephrase the question,” I said. “So what?”

“Well, it means if you suffer a stroke, doctors can use our machine to make a much faster, more accurate diagnosis, which could mean the difference between going home and living a full life or never recognizing your family again.”

“Now I’m interested! Why didn’t you say that before?” I asked.

“I guess I never thought about it that way,” he said.

Start thinking about it that way. Nobody cares about your product or service. They care about what your product or service will do for them. Selling the benefit plays a big role in the Apple experience. Make sure it plays a prominent role in your experience as well.

I
f you talk to Apple employees long enough they begin to sound a lot like Robert Redford in
The Horse Whisperer
. Redford’s character, Tom Booker, speaks in short pearls of wisdom. Here are some quotes from the movie followed by actual remarks I’ve heard from Apple employees.

Tom Booker:
I don’t help people with horse problems. I help horses with people problems.

Apple Genius:
We don’t fix computers. We repair relationships.

Tom Booker:
When I work with a horse, it’s no good just me doing it. The owner’s got to be involved, too.

Apple Specialist:
It’s not good enough for me to solve the problem. I want to empower you to find a solution.

Tom Booker:
When I work with a horse, I want to know its history. I try to figure out what’s going on in its head.

Apple Manager:
We don’t hire people because they were great trainers at another company. We hire people who can get inside the head of a customer.

Tom Booker:
It’s not a question if you can. You are.

Apple Creative:
Don’t say you can’t. You can.

In the movie, Tom Booker helps a traumatized teenager find the confidence to ride her horse again after a tragic accident. On the Apple Store stage, Specialists, Creatives, and Geniuses play the role of Tom Booker by helping people discover their inner strengths and providing them the tools and the education to reach their potential.

One Apple Specialist told me that a customer, an older man, once kissed him on the cheek before he left the store. The customer
was anxious about using computers. His kids, who seemed to be the know-it-all types, were frustrated with their dad’s lack of knowledge and would roll their eyes when he asked questions. When the kids went to another part of the store, the Specialist showed the father something on the Mac that even his kids didn’t know. When the kids returned a few minutes later, the father proudly showed them what he had learned. Their jaws dropped, the dad had a big grin on his face, and he ended the transaction by planting a kiss on the employee’s cheek. In this case the
customer
gave the employee a “fond farewell” he would always remember!

Apple employee teaching a customer something new.
Source: Getty Images

One to One is a membership program at the Apple Retail Store designed to help you get the most out of Apple’s products. For $99, upon the purchase of a new Mac, Apple customers can sign up for one year of personalized classes. The classes are made by appointment and conducted face-to-face in an Apple Store with Creatives who are trained to give instruction on Apple products and software. Customers can learn just about anything: basics about the Mac operating system; how to design a website; enjoying, sharing, and editing photos or movies; creating a presentation; and much more. One to One offers several ways to learn: one-hour personal visits with a trainer, small group workshops, or longer blocks of time where multiple customers work on their own personal projects while a trainer checks in to see how they’re doing.

The One to One program was created to help build customers for life. It was designed on the premise that the more you understand a product, the more you enjoy it, and the more likely you are to build a long-term relationship with the company. And don’t forget that the more you like a product and the relationship you’ve experienced with the company, the more likely you are to recommend the product or service to someone else.

Instructors are trained to provide guidance and instruction, but also to inspire customers, giving them the tools to make them more creative than they ever imagined. Apple doesn’t sell One to One as an unnecessary add-on to boost its bottom line. One to One is a critical
component of the Apple experience, which is why it is always offered and discussed with customers as a benefit to purchasing a Mac. In my own experience, the Apple Keynote presentation software has opened up a new way for me to think about the presentations I give and how I instruct clients on telling stories through presentations. When I first learned Keynote, I tried to read a manual, but it wasn’t nearly as empowering as when I sat side-by-side with a Creative who helped me unleash my “inner presentation genius.”

You might recall meeting Carolyn DiPiero in Part I. She is the retired schoolteacher from Modesto, California, who bought her first Mac primarily because of the interactions she experienced in the store. DiPiero signed up for the One to One training program and took full advantage of it, scheduling sessions to learn everything she could about the platform and its software. When I asked DiPiero what she remembers from the sessions, she recalled how Creatives built her confidence through personal conversations. They made her feel that they, too, were in her place at one time and if they could learn, so could she. Many of them actually were in her shoes. I’ve met several Apple Store employees who were inspired to apply for the company after they took One to One classes. Some became Creatives, others aspired to be Creatives, and others became Specialists on the sales floor or on the management track. How many companies do you know that make such a profound influence on their customers that many of those customers end up working for the company? If you can inspire people to feel better about themselves and their abilities—and to discover abilities they didn’t even know they had—those people are going to be loyal to you and evangelize your brand.