The Apple Experience

Take a quick moment to think back through the last seven days of your life. Recall places you went: restaurants, shopping, perhaps traveling. In those seven days odds are excellent you probably experienced, at best, mediocre service in some regard. If you had truly memorable service, the kind that makes you want to convince others to patronize said business, then you are in the minority.

The Apple Experience: Secrets to Building Insanely Great Customer Loyalty is, fair to say, a most welcome antibiotic for a woeful and ailing service industry.

Think divorce isn’t relevant to a discussion of customer service? Think again. Studies have shown that a large percentage of divorces are not so much the result of relationship symptoms—like an extramarital affair—but rather take root much more deeply: Most such affairs come about because one partner no longer feels special—which of course the “other” party accomplishes.

That’s a painful, yet incredibly potent way to truly understand what great customer service can do for one person. Wouldn’t you like to know how to keep your customers and clients so happy that they not only stay with you and return again, they also actively evangelize your business?

Carmine Gallo doesn’t ask you simply to look through the glass doors of Apple stores, he wants you to study and embrace the simple elegance—and a large part of that experience has little to do with selling, but rather relationships.

Mr. Gallo acknowledges that not every business model is conducive to a literal application of Apple’s “5 Steps of Service,” but within The Apple Experience he provides the tools and reasoning necessary for any owner, manager, or supervisor to elevate their offerings, to differentiate themselves from the competition not from a cost perspective but from touching people’s lives. Apple’s word of choice is “enriching:” as in the ability to achieve a deeper emotional connection with employees and customers.

Among the concepts discussed are:
• resetting the customer’s “internal clock;”
• hiring for passion and other non-typical traits—a company can train to do tasks but cannot train for personality;
• creating “wow moments” that not only exceed damage control but also provide fantastic opportunities to convert detractors into promoters;
• understanding that costs go far beyond bottom line labor numbers;
• enriching lives is not just for customers and clients, but especially important: for your employees.

That last bullet point gets a good deal of real estate in the book and for good reason. Once again, recall the last few times you experienced standard, blasé service. People in positions like that are going through expected motions.

The author states early on the seemingly obvious yet most often overlooked facet of great service: “Gallup has found that 71 percent of employees in the United States are “not engaged” or worse, “actively disengaged and emotionally disconnected” from their workplace.” Outside of the all-important paycheck, it’s hard to remain passionate about a job you don’t care about or a company that lacks vision.

Mr. Gallo fans the flames of another incredibly important facet of human motivation: that monetary incentives work only to a small degree. Most people thrive upon—and want—some form of praise; and many want to feel like they are part of something bigger, a genuine part of helping their company grow. These are psychological intangibles that wield far more power than mere trinkets or bonuses.

Apple, via Steve Jobs’s vision, has taken a retail concept most analysts predicted would quickly fail and turned it into a stunning revenue juggernaut with an almost rabid following.

The crux of Apple’s revolutionary tale is that success isn’t just about cool looking products or spiffy, trendy retail spaces—those are contributing factors to be certain. But profits steadily grow because, to a person, Apple employees are trained and are genuinely passionate about not only the brand but also about creating that special je ne sais quoi—that feeling of connection. Apple’s cultural tenet according to the author: “They want to reach your heart, not your wallet.”

From the very beginning, The Apple Experience compares religion to the loyalty/fervor Apple engenders. The parallel is explained clearly enough in the book, and any reader serious about learning and profiting from Gallo’s research will completely understand the analogy.

The author is to be applauded for calling out Sears customer service (and others) by name. It certainly would have been far less troublesome to state something like “a once great retail giant” or “an institutional retail chain.” Instead he chooses to take the shot straight up, with no chaser, and juxtaposes his personal experience with Apple’s customer service. The upshot? A social media-heavy consumer base can do damage more quickly and more easily than at any other time in retail history.

Any of these companies can change their culture. It must come from within, and it must be more than lip service. Mr. Gallo challenges the reader to go into any Apple store and experience the principles he outlines for themselves, to observe interactions between Apple staff and customers, to pay attention to expressions and body language as customers exit the store.

The Apple Experience is bursting with paradigm shifting ideas and plenty of solid reasons for putting the Apple model to work, supported by such successful top tier companies: FedEx, Zappos, Disney, Lush, Outback Steakhouse, just to name a few. Their stories hammer in the notion that ho-hum customer service most other companies egregiously pass off as a quality “customer experience” is, in a word, not.

“Average is officially over” the author quotes. Say what you will about the Apple brand or its products. From crossing the store threshold to the very box your purchase comes in, every detail of the Apple experience is designed to touch a part of our nature that most retailers utterly disregard.

Over ten years of retail dominance . . . isn’t it worth considering what Apple is doing right? Any service provider, doctor, lawyer, bartender, accountant, or tailor can leverage The Apple Experience to work in their favor. The first question to ask is sublime yet simple: Are your current results satisfactory . . . or do you want insanely great service—and the loyalty of your customers that goes with it?

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Another hearty thank you to Rhonda Sturtz of the New York Journal of Books, and to McGraw Hill for their efforts in acquiring the review copy for this review.

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Only The Young Can Say . . .

Consider, for one moment, the text you are currently reading. Really.

Sit back for a second and try not to read the words as much as look at them. Are you looking at them upon a flat-screen monitor, or perhaps from the technological marvel of a smartphone? Maybe from a laptop, perched at the kitchen counter, sitting in your favorite chair, or propped up in bed?

Now, take a moment to consider your surroundings. I’d bet there are, at minimum, two other gadgets within view—maybe a television, a Kindle or Nook, an iPod, a digital camera, another cell phone.

While these things seem substantially obvious, even absurdly so, they all point to a common denominator which we don’t quickly identify with: our innate need to be connected. Even the coffee machine on the counter speaks not just to our need to wake up, but as a centerpiece for many a social life.

That’s on an individual level, within our own personal sphere of influence or proximity. Expand your imagination perhaps one more degree to the local or community level where you may have neighborhood or town newsletters to stay abreast of what those around you are doing. One more degree to the national stage and we have radio, television, cable, all these outlets that bombard us with information day in and day out.

Now, step back again and think about what technology has completely wrapped itself around all of these?

Did you think of the internet?

From GPS to our cell phones, to streaming radion stations and network feeds, and instant news captured by video phones. We literally walk about, every day, immersed in digitalia.

Back in January 2011, as I listened to news about the uprising in Tunisia, I was struck by how pathetic the attempts made by the government were to cut off access to media and the internet; too often government—our own republic included—fails to account for sheer human will. Such governments, many tyrannical dictatorships, rely on keeping their populace uneducated—essentially a political form of sanctioned stupidity. If the people don’t know any better then they are certainly more apt to believe whatever a regime sees fit to feed it as truth. Large swathes of the Middle East make this profusely clear.

But many of their youth travel abroad to get an education they can’t possibly dream of getting at home. They attend universities in Europe and here in America. They quickly become enamored with our freedoms and prosperity. They are given a chance to see the world as it truly is without the shroud of a theocracy dictating what they should think and feel. Youth, well versed in the binary arts, become a force of mind and power.

Utilizing Facebook and a smartphone they organize rallies and protests. They grasp the veil of ignorance and try to extirpate its white-knuckled grip upon their countrymen. They find a way, even when internet access is locked down, to get word out.

And look at the effect it has had . . .

Tunisia has fallen and an interim government set up in hopes of establishing a more free and transparent kind of system. Egypt has ousted its long-time dictators. As I write this the people of Libya are desperately trying to break the grasp of one of history’s most astute buffoons in Muammar Gaddafi. Bahrain, Yemen, and Syria are currently dealing with roiling discontent of their own. These things are not just news items. These happenings are nothing short of a digital crusade in a land that long has suppressed the Natural Rights of humanity while hoisting the banner of strict adherence to ascetic principles of God; natural rights are considered to be divinely inherent, gifts which each human are born with, therefore the two cannot be treated as mutually exclusive.

Youth are driving this almost cataclysmic change, and doing so by the powers vested in them via technology and education.

I wondered how American youth perceive this power, or if they give the slightest thought to it whatsoever. I put an ad on Craigslist and eBay asking if any were interested in sharing their thoughts in a guest post. I received a number of inquiries, but to date I have received only three guest posts. You will be reading these three over the next week. I wanted to widen the scope of the matter to include not just global events but also the interactive aspect of technology and how it affects relationships, both familial and external.

If you know of someone who would like to participate then let me know! The responses I have received are all from Arizona; would be interesting to get a larger demo-geographic slice of opinion.

Please be sure to come back and see what the next generation has to say about the technology that powers their everyday lives—Abbey Wells, Alicia Triassi-DeMayo, and my son Chayce may just surprise you with how connected they are to both the virtual and real worlds.

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