The Apple Experience: Secrets to Building Insanely Great Customer Loyalty (26 page)

When I got engaged, I was working for CNN in New York City, living in a small, 700-square-foot, studio apartment. I didn’t trust leaving the ring there for the two months before I flew back to California where I had planned to pop the question. “No problem,” said the friendly Tiffany clerk. “We can keep it here in our vault until you’re ready to pick it up.” I was also told that my wife could walk into any Tiffany store anywhere in the world and get it cleaned as she waited—no fees or the hassle of having to come back later to retrieve the ring. The clerk wasn’t exaggerating. To this day, my wife and I drop into a Tiffany store from time to time and wait for a few minutes while they clean her ring. They instantly recognize the Tiffany design and treat us like royalty—
in every store, every time
. The treatment she gets is far more rewarding than if she
just took her ring to another jeweler or jewelry repair location. Tiffany’s quality enticed me, but the consistency of the experience won me over and created a customer for life. Apple has followed the same philosophy to become the crown jewel of the retail world.

No two geniuses are exactly alike, but at Apple they all receive the same intensive training at Apple’s Cupertino headquarters. When Apple customers have a problem or need a repair, they are asked to make an appointment at the Genius Bar, where someone with exceptionally high technical skills will troubleshoot iPads, iPods, Macs, or iPhones. The Genius Bar was actually Ron Johnson’s idea. You might recall from Part I that the Four Seasons Hotels inspired the Apple Store customer service philosophy. That prompted Johnson to send his first store managers to explore luxury hotels like Four Seasons and The Ritz-Carlton. Johnson approached Jobs and suggested they create something in between a concierge and a bar and staff it with the smartest Mac experts. They could call them Geniuses. Jobs immediately dismissed the idea, but Johnson learned the very next day that Jobs had trademarked the name
Genius Bar
. Johnson fearlessly made his case, and it worked.

Apple keeps a tight lid on its policies, techniques, and what employees can and cannot say publicly. But it keeps an especially tight rein on Geniuses. Very few Geniuses have spoken publicly. Those who have spoken have revealed that each Genius goes through two weeks of intensive training and a battery of certifications at Apple headquarters. The training includes role-playing in an Apple Store mock-up.

According to confidential Apple training manuals published in the
Wall Street Journal
, once the training is over, there’s very little they don’t know about Apple products and they are all trained to offer emergency aid for emotionally distraught customers. One excerpt from the manual detailed how Geniuses at every store, in every country, and in every language should handle distraught customers who bring in broken devices or who fear they have lost
all their data. According to the manual, Geniuses should do the following:

 

• Look for the underlying cause of the person’s reaction. Is it frustration, fear, confusion?
  ⁴
  
 

• Reassure the customer that you are here to help.
  
 

• Listen and limit your responses to simple reassurances that you are doing so (e.g., “Uh-huh” and “I understand”).
  
 

• Apologize when appropriate (e.g., “On behalf of Apple I would like to apologize …”).
  
 

• Take notes. Even when people are venting, they are often providing important details. It will save time later and help you listen without interrupting.
  
 

• Acknowledge the customer’s underlying reaction. “I can certainly understand how frustrating this can be.” “I know this can seem very confusing.”
  

Inconsistency destroys a brand’s value. Every time a customer interacts with your brand—on the web, on the phone, or in the store—that customer is judging the experience. An inconsistent experience could spell disaster for any brand. Apple doesn’t take any customer touchpoint for granted. Every experience in the store—whether it happens in the “red zone” (sales floor) or at the Genius Bar—is planned and practiced down to the exact conversation. The result is that customers
should
get a consistent experience in any store, in any language, each and every time. I say
should
because, as we’ve discussed, it doesn’t always happen. But it happens consistently enough to make Apple one of the world’s premier retailers.

Branding experts will tell you that consistency of experience is one of the main components for building a lasting brand. For this to happen, though, every employee must be made responsible for creating and delivering the experience and fulfilling the brand promise. “Merely explaining and communicating the experience to employees will not differentiate an organization from its competitors. Successful organizations need to embed the experience into
the corporate culture, hiring criteria, education programs, employee objectives, compensation plans, and incentive programs,”
⁵
according to customer service expert Lior Arussy. “As consumers, we seek to do business with companies that are constantly elevating the quality and consistency of their customer experiences. We want to deal with empowered employees who not only have the tools and authority to solve our challenges, but the knowledge and background to truly understand our challenges and how we perceive and appreciate value.”

Arussy believes that exceptional performance is the new standard, and every leader and employee must meet those standards and demonstrate the brand’s values to establish emotional connections that each and every customer will remember and cherish. Apple is not alone in delivering a consistent experience. It lives in a rare orbit, of course, but I’ve studied several other brands that exist in the same galaxy. Two brands share many similarities with Apple even though they are in completely different product categories—soap and shoes.

At Lush, happy people make happy soap, literally—the handcrafted cosmetics are fresh, free of preservatives, and made with ingredients not tested on animals. I know because employees consistently tell me the same story over and over (recall the sample message map based on Lush talking points in Chapter 13).

The lesson of how Lush cosmetics grew from one small store in Poole, England, to a worldwide chain of 700 shops in forty-four countries holds four valuable insights for any business seeking to provide an Apple-like customer experience.

“We pride ourselves on ethics,”
⁶
according to Lush North America president Mark Wolverton, whom I interviewed for a
Forbes.com
column. “As we grow, we refuse to change the very things that make us unique.” Wolverton told me that Lush has always strived to make
a positive environmental impact. It does so by sourcing from vendors who use no child labor or animal-tested products. The products are 100 percent vegetarian and 80 percent vegan. According to Wolverton, this is the “ethical choice” that Lush has made since its inception.

Regardless of the choices and values you choose to make in your business, it’s important to maintain a unique identity. Ask yourself, what does my company stand for? Apple is in the business of enriching lives. What business are you in?

Once you know what your company stands for, you must communicate your unique values through multiple channels. Individual Lush stores maintain their own Facebook pages, and Lush tells its story through its website and a free in-store newspaper called the
Lush Times
. Lush also does something unique—it gets involved in environmental causes by holding events and protests at its stores. In North America, Lush has run controversial campaigns tackling issues like overpackaging in the cosmetics industry, the Canadian commercial seal hunt, and the Canadian oil sands (the extraction of oil from Alberta’s tar sands has sparked fierce environmental opposition). To raise awareness of such issues, Lush staff at some stores have stripped down to nothing but an apron to protest overpackaging, storefronts have been converted into giant blood-spattered placards, and protests have been held to end Canada’s tar sands project and encourage investment in clean energy.

Wolverton acknowledged that Lush’s tactics might turn off some customers. (Lush has stores in Alberta, and some employees have family members who work in the oil sands.) But they are also passionate about their values and communicating those values. “We strive for a substantial amount of transparency in the business. We must act in a green fashion and the causes we support. It all fits together,” says Wolverton.

You might disagree with Lush’s stand on environmental issues—and many do—but the store has values and sticks to them. It’s more important that as a business you stand for something and communicate those values consistently.

Lush includes its employees in every facet of its business—from the causes it supports to the discussion of its products. Again, Lush does something unique. It sends new products to every employee’s home so they can use it for themselves. Employees are the brand’s best ambassadors, so this intimate knowledge of each and every new product carries over to a high rate of customer satisfaction and loyalty. I visited four stores (Orlando, Carmel, San Francisco, and Paris) and in each location, the employees had thorough knowledge of every product—from soaps to shampoos. Lush has thousands of employees who know the details of every product. I’ve visited many small businesses with far fewer employees who don’t know very much about the products or services. There’s no excuse for poor training. Apple, too, involves its employees in the success of the company. Apple managers are frequently challenging Specialists to come up with radical ideas to improve the customer experience. Although an employee on the Apple sales floor cannot reposition product or alter the visual standard of the store handed down by Apple headquarters, they do have flexibility to make decisions to improve the customer experience. For example, employees are designated in zones (iPad table, MacBook table, etc.). If, however, an employee in the iPad section notices that a customer has been standing for a while in the iPod section and looks confused, that employee can move to the iPod zone with no fear of reprimand from a manager.

Wolverton says Lush strives to hire people who don’t see it as a job but as a lifestyle choice. “It’s nice to work for a business you believe in,” says Wolverton. “They are working at a job where the values behind our brand and the product fit with the choices they make in their personal lives.” Apple, too, celebrates diversity. It doesn’t matter if an employee wishes to sport a tattoo, pierce his body, or wear a mohawk. The customer experience is the only thing that matters. Lush’s strong growth proves that you can win in business
by creating an environment where people have an opportunity to grow, be involved in the business, and connect with its values. Above all, Lush teaches small business owners that it’s not enough to sell a product. Sell a story as well.

As a business model, Zappos is simple to understand. It sells shoes, clothes, and merchandise online. But aren’t there millions of sites that sell goods online? Well, they do, but not nearly as successfully as Zappos. In ten years, Zappos, which started in the San Francisco apartment of its CEO, Tony Hsieh, grew from no sales to more than one billion in gross annual sales. In 2009, Amazon purchased Zappos for $1.2 billion. Today Zappos is considered one of the best places to work as well as a champion of exceptional customer service. I have interviewed CEO Tony Hsieh before, and when I visited the Zappos headquarters in Henderson, Nevada, I had a chance to speak to many of his employees. It gave me an inside look into how Zappos has established itself as one of the leaders in customer service. Here are four tips I learned from Hsieh about building a consistent corporate culture where everybody lives the brand’s values.
⁷

You might remember the story I told in Part I about the shuttle bus driver who picked me up from the hotel. I was the only one on the bus. When I asked the driver why she drove all the way out to pick me up, she said, “We treat all of our customers as family. If you had a family member in town, wouldn’t you pick them from their hotel or the airport?” Once I entered Zappos headquarters, I discovered that each and every employee and phone representative shared the same enthusiasm. They were eager to share their culture and would answer any question that I asked. No public relations person escorted me through the halls as they do in most companies. I could speak to anybody about anything. That’s how much Zappos trusts its employees to articulate the company’s vision.

The Zappos customer service reps are not required to follow a script nor do they have to adhere to time limits on their calls. Their only mission is to wow customers and create an emotional connection with them. For example, every employee has postcards sitting next to the phone. They are encouraged to build relationships with customers and drop them a handwritten note. These are simple gestures that guarantee a customer for life. Customer service isn’t brain surgery. It is simply common sense, courtesy, and the desire to treat everyone—customers, partners, and employees—like family. Empower your staff to meet and exceed your customer’s expectations in each and every interaction.