Let them eat cake

December 12th, 2005 Posted in Advertising, Culture, Engagement Marketing, Ethics, Generation C, Marketing, Philosophy, Quotes, Retail, Society

Anyone that knows me well, knows that I am a lifelong devotee and worshipper of the Apple brand. Indeed I have expoused the virtues of Apple many times at the SMLXL blog

Which is why it pains me to the core to write this blog.

But I am mad, I am pissed, incensed.

Why? Because I feel Apple has truly let me down.

So, I buy my daughter an Apple iPod - She is very happy. Until it crashes - Pooooph.

Then my daughter, my wife and I get into a real conversation with the Apple “ahhem” customer support service.

After this I feel I have been in a 7 set tennis match. Anyway Apple agree our iPod is fucked and agree to replace it. Do we want the ipod engraved with my daughters name? Oh yes please. So when the ipod comes back Emma has now become Nemma I mean Nemma, does anyone out there know a Nemma? Because I don’t.

There was some serious eyeball rolling in the Moore household. Of course the discussion is do we dare send it back to wait another 6 weeks for it to come back as Moon station unit, Slemma, Gemma, Phemma - oh the list is endless.

So we decide to bite the bullet and tease our daughter that she now needs to change her name by deed pole to Nemma. Oh how we all laughed, ironically.

Anyway, so we have had the NEW ipod 3 months. And guesss what? It crashes yup thats right - you know the unhappy lookiing ipod icon.

So I go online - navigate my way through the byzantine Apple help site only to discover that the warranty has expired. WHAT, WHAT the F@$K.

I mean, if you had a brand new car, dishwasher, bed, shower oh come on you name it and it was faulty well inside its warranty period you would want it replaced with a brand new whatever and a full years warranty.

So wassup Apple? You guys are going to get a broadside and remember we won at Trafalger!

Coincidentally - Simon Caulkin wrote a very relevant piece in the Observer on Sunday entitled Customers are not just for Christmas

Caulkin writes

Can it be ‘bah, humbug’ time again already? Every Christmas the appeal to our better nature serves to throw into ever more grating relief the mendacity, or at least deliberate ambiguity, at the heart of so many companies’ business practice - and this one is no exception.
Thus the boss of GNER admitted last week that it was hard to find cheap fares on the company’s website, adding coolly that it would take a year to make them more accessible. The next day British Gas was taken to task by the Advertising Standards Authority for a misleading ad campaign - for the seventh time in a year. Happy Christmas, suckers.

Listed is a litany of cyncial bad business practice - just what I need a bit of a pep before I really get going.

Loyal customers are often worst treated, paying more for services than ‘rate tarts’ who switch every few months. Loyalty, in effect, is a mugs’ game.

The cynical may shrug, but that’s showbiz. Caveat emptor. As Groucho Marx put it: ‘The secret of success is honesty and fair dealing. Fake that, and you’ve got it made.’

But today, you only have to look at what happened to Kryptonite here too and Dell to observe what happens when the community bites back.

Ironic then that Caulkin cites Apple as a good example

Good profits are self-sustaining because customers not only come back again for repeat purchases, they become advocates for the company - a virtual marketing department. Apple customers are a good example. Bad profits are the reverse. Instead of creating value for customers, behaviour like that above appropriates value from them.

But it’s a mistake to think that ripped-off customers are passive. They find ways of getting even that exert a huge toll on offenders. In a mirror image they become an anti-marketing department: an invisible army of detractors, each of whose negative comments typically cancels out several recommendations. Detractors complain more, make more calls on customer service and are a hidden drag on growth. They cost more and spend less. Angry customers depress employees, compounding the effect. And to neutralise their influence requires ever greater effort by the companies.

Says Andy Taylor, CEO, Enterprise Rent-A-Car.

The only way to grow a business is to (do stuff so good that you can) get customers to come back for more and tell their friends.

Well, I am telling my friends not to buy an Apple and there are enough stories to really make you wonder what Apple are up to.

Guys - YOU reinvented the music industry, you were almost the pied piper leading us to the promised land. So why does your technology and service SUCK and BLOW?

Why do you make it so hard? Why do you insult me by mispelling my daughters name. Surely you can see I run a small business and that we run a few Apples and lots of other Apple stuff. Surely a helping hand would not be so hard?

Don’t make your marketing so adversarial - otherwise we are off to buy N-series phones and computers from elsewhere.

And think on this…

The best companies intuitively understand that good service is not about loyalty programmes, satisfaction surveys or CRM, it’s about allowing customers to pull the value they need with the minimum of fuss and effort. If you provide that kind of customer service, you won’t need ‘customer service’ at all. And the NPS will, deservedly, go through the roof.

Perhaps someone from Apple might like to get in touch. But I doubt you will - besides its the festive season and there are far too many christmas parties to go to - As Louis the XVI wife said of the growing restlessness of the French population who were starving in the streets

Let them eat cake

And we know how that ended don’t we!

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