The Apple Experience: Secrets to Building Insanely Great Customer Loyalty Read Free

Made Simple
     
    The Apple Experience
is divided into three parts. Part I, “Inspiring Your Internal Customer,” focuses on employees, training, and internal communications. Part II, “Serving Your External Customer,” reveals specific techniques to wow your customers in every conversation. Part III, “Setting the Stage,” discusses the environment in which you present yourself, your brand, and your product. Although each of the parts is equally important to providing an Apple experience, most observers stick to what they can see—Apple products and the design of the stores. The Apple experience is so much more. “If Apple products were the key to the Stores’ success, how do you explain the fact that people flock to the stores to buy Apple products at full price when Walmart, Best-Buy, and Target carry most of them, often discounted in various ways, and Amazon carries them all—and doesn’t charge sales tax!” 2 according to Apple’s former head of retail, Ron Johnson. “People come to the Apple Store for the experience—and they’re willing to pay a premium for that.”

Enriching Lives
     
    All Apple employees are encouraged to carry a credo card, a wallet-sized card that outlines the vision behind the Apple Retail Store. The first two words on the front of the card are “Enriching Lives.” Those are the two most important words in this book. According to Ron Johnson, retailers should be asking themselves, “How do we reinvent the store to enrich our customers’ lives?” 3 When you enrich the lives of your employees, they are more engaged in your business, are less likely to leave, and offer better customer service. When you enrich the lives of your customers or clients, they will reward you with their business and, more important, become your most ardent fans and actively promote your business to others. When you enter the business of “enriching lives,” magical things start to happen. Let’s make magic together.

PART I
     

INSPIRING YOUR INTERNAL CUSTOMER
     
    The most important component to the Apple experience is that the staff isn’t focused on selling stuff. It’s focused on building relationships and trying to make people’s lives better.
     
    —Ron Johnson
     
    W hen the Apple Store celebrated its tenth anniversary, the majority of media articles credited its success to products and design, but as Ron Johnson has pointed out, those are only a small piece of the experience puzzle. If your employees are not trained, personable, and passionate about the brand, you’ll have no chance of building a company that delivers an Apple quality experience.
    Sadly, many companies rank low on the customer satisfaction index because their employees are discouraged, disillusioned, and uninspired. Gallup has found that 71 percent of employees in the United States are “not engaged” or worse, “actively disengaged and emotionally disconnected” from their workplaces. 1 This is a shocking observation. Seventy percent of employees are emotionally disconnected. That means they simply don’t care about their job and their company. No wonder customer service is the pits. Offering more perks like free soda in the vending machine or free-pizza Friday won’t change the culture. People want to be inspired. They want to work toward a higher purpose and to feel good about themselves and the brands they work for.
    I once met a college student, Lynda, whose former boyfriend was a changed man after only two months at the Apple Store. She told me that if he had exhibited the same traits when they were dating, the two would still be together!
    “What was different about him?” I asked Lynda. She said, “He was more confident. He could talk to people easier. He was less judgmental. He was a better listener. It sounds cliché, but he was the guy who I knew he was capable of becoming!”
    Apple touches the lives of its customers only after touching its employees. “Why do you like working here?” I once asked