The Apple Experience: Secrets to Building Insanely Great Customer Loyalty (17 page)
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Authors: Carmine Gallo
Tags: #Business & Economics, #Marketing, #General, #Customer Relations, #Business & Economics/customer relations, #Business & Economics/industries/computer industry, #Business & Economics/marketing/general, #Business & Economics/industries/retailing, #Business & Economics/management, #Business & Economics/leadership
AT&T developed a six-step process dubbed the AT&T Retail Experience.
3
The steps are remarkably similar to Apple’s guiding principles. These tactics will work for any retailer or any service company seeking to improve the customer’s experience with the brand.
1.
Greet and approach.
AT&T store employees now greet customers within ten feet and ten seconds of entering the door. I’ve challenged this tactic by entering several stores, and as I mentioned before, even on Black Friday. Employees never greeted me in ten seconds. They made it five seconds or less! AT&T retail staff will greet customers and introduce themselves by their first names. Once they know you on a first-name basis, they’ll have started to make a deeper, more emotional connection with you.2.
Build value.
An employee will ask customers specific questions to understand the purpose of their visit. This is consistent with the “Probing” step of the Apple experience. Every AT&T sales associate is certified in small business issues so they can address individual questions or questions specifically related to businesses. The purpose is to avoid a situation where several customers are waiting on one small business expert while other employees are free but unavailable to help.3.
Offer solutions.
This is a key step. Employees are told that AT&T is not in the business of selling products. They are in the business of selling solutions. Customers don’t walk through the door to buy a phone. They are interested in sending e-mail, texting, enjoying music, or sharing video with their kids. The wireless industry had always been considered a “transaction” oriented industry, but today’s AT&T employees are much more focused on sending people home with the right solutions to help them lead more enriching lives.4.
Gain agreement.
AT&T has a very low return rate, quite likely due to this critical fourth step. Employees must make sure they have helped customers walk out with the solutions they were
looking for. They are even taught to educate customers about solutions and benefits they were not aware even existed. This step cannot occur, however, unless the employee asks the right questions in the previous steps and develops a rapport with the customers.5.
Walk out working.
This is the educational step. If a customer walked in wanting a phone to text her kids, the employee will show the customer how to take a photo and send it as an SMS. Employees will even set up a customer’s e-mail in the store. Again, Apple does the same thing. Apple will transfer your data, set up e-mail, or do anything else you need to make sure your system works when you take it home. Reducing frustration after the sale raises the customer’s perception of the overall experience.6.
Thank and depart.
An AT&T employee will thank customers and walk them toward the door. Why? Because that’s how you would treat guests in your home. As simple as it sounds, it rarely occurs in the retailing industry, with one notable exception—Apple.
Like Apple, AT&T expects every customer to walk out with a smile. Every employee in every store is expected to model the six behaviors, and if a salesperson cannot exhibit these behaviors in every interaction, there should be no role for that person at an AT&T store. The stores are very strict about the training and have high expectations for each and every one of AT&T’s 26,000 employees.
As I was writing this chapter, I heard a radio interview on the topic of why men cheat. A marriage counselor was giving explanations for why men stray from their wedding vows. As I listened to the interview, I realized that customers are disloyal to brands for the same reasons. Twenty years as a counselor had convinced this person that men don’t cheat because the other person is more attractive. Ninety-two percent of men said they cheated because they felt underappreciated in their current marriage. In other words, the other person made them feel special.
Apple and other customer service champs are successful because they make customers feel special. They approach with a warm welcome, they ask questions, they listen, they enhance the conversation, and they give you a feeling of empowerment. You leave the interaction with a smile on your face, with the confidence to conquer the world. Steve Jobs once said that life is too short to live someone else’s dream. I would add that life is too short to hang around people—or brands—that pull you down instead of building you up. If you can make your customers feel appreciated, confident, and admired, they’ll reward you with your loyalty. It’s good for marriages. It’s good for your brand, too.
1.
Study the
five steps of service.
Review Apple’s five steps of service and evaluate how you could incorporate each step in your business whether you run a physical location or a virtual service.2.
Train your staff to follow the five steps.
If you manage staff, hold training sessions on the five steps of service. Develop mock scenarios where employees play the roles of the customer and the salesperson. Show them what the five steps really look and sound like. Send them the list, but don’t forget to practice and model the behavior, too.3.
Conduct your own research.
Start observing the difference for yourself. Walk into an Apple,
LEGO
, or AT&T retail store, and watch the interactions. See how those interactions compare to other stores that do not follow the model.
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Reset Your Customer’s Internal Clock
Customers shouldn’t think of your business as a place to buy a product or use a service. It should be a fun place to be!
—Richard Branson
T
ime slows down in a busy Apple Store. Employees work on a noncommissioned floor, which means there is no pressure to sell you a product quickly and to show you the door. By reducing the pressure customers feel when they’re in the store, Apple has built the world’s most profitable retail experience. It’s astonishing that more businesses haven’t caught on to this very simple principle! Some retail employees work for stores that do not have a commission structure but their bonuses are contingent upon meeting quotas. Managers at Apple Retail Stores know the monthly numbers they are supposed to reach, but the pressure to make those numbers rarely infiltrates the sales floor. The focus is on building relationships, and as a result, monthly sales goals are often met or exceeded. Apple has figured out what Isadore Sharp had discovered years earlier when he founded
Four Seasons Hotels: customers who feel happy and relaxed will reward your brand with their business and their loyalty.
In today’s competitive global environment, people are stressed, hurried, and in many cases, forced to do more with fewer resources. Many customers are discouraged, tired, and grumpy. They certainly don’t want to feel that way outside of work. Apple has an interesting challenge—how does a store with thousands of visitors a week turn discouraged, tired, and grumpy customers into inspired, energized, and happy ones? Store design is part of the solution, and we will address the topic in Part III. But an even more important element to creating an unhurried environment involves improving the communication between customers and staff in a way that alters customers’ perceptions of time spent waiting for service.
One major U.S. retailer that has emulated the Apple model—and has the customer service scores to prove it—shared an internal study with me that proves the value of resetting internal clocks. The research was so overwhelming that the store’s managers coach employees to follow the method in each and every transaction, and the store has tens of thousands of employees in North America.
Here’s what the retailer learned: when customers are greeted with a warm, friendly welcome, their perception of how long they wait is positively altered and their overall experience is enhanced significantly. Recall we already discussed the importance of a warm greeting in the Apple steps of service, but now it’s important to expand on this and discuss how the greeting makes a difference in resetting clocks.
The internal research trial was conducted with two groups of customers. The first group was greeted by a friendly, smiling employee within seconds of walking through the door. They waited exactly three minutes for a salesperson to help them. The other group was not greeted and waited exactly the same amount of time. Both groups of customers were asked, “How promptly were you served?” The first group—the ones who had been greeted—said they spent less time waiting than those customers in the second
group. Their perception of time had been altered. They had been given permission to slow down from their harried lives, take a deep breath, and enjoy the experience.
Altering the perception of time was just one benefit of greeting a customer. In the previous study, the customers were also asked, “On a scale from 1 to 10, how likely are you to recommend [retailer]?” By now you can probably guess which group gave the higher score.
One of the keys to resetting your customer’s internal clock is to be specific. Don’t be vague. It’s not enough to say, “I’ll be right with you.” Instead say, “I’m finishing up with this customer, and I’ll be with you in five minutes. If there’s someone who can help you even sooner, I’ll send them right over.” If the customer had already been waiting five minutes, her internal clock has now been reset and is starting again.
Apple also knows that approaching customers with a warm, friendly greeting is one of the easiest and most effective ways of slowing down a customer’s internal clock. If done correctly, customers who have waited fifteen minutes for assistance will think they waited no more than a few minutes. Here is how a typical scenario might play out at an especially busy Apple Store where expectations about when service can be provided are set quickly and effectively.
Employee (Apple Specialist):
Hi, welcome to Apple. How can we help you today?Customer:
I’m thinking of getting an iPad, and I’d like to take a look at them.Employee:
Great. My name is Melinda. And your name?Customer:
Carmine.Employee:
Carmine, nice to meet you. As you can see, the store is really busy right now. Do me a favor and head over to the iPad table and just start playing with the devices. Have fun. If I can get to you next, I will.
But if you see someone free, grab them. I’ll also let the other Specialists know that you would like their help, and one of them will get to you as soon as possible. But play with the iPad. There are videos, games, and a whole lot more already on the device. Will that be OK?Customer:
Sure. How long will it be? It’s really crowded.Employee:
It is busy. It will be at least three to five minutes before I can get over here. I do have a manager on the floor right now, and I’ll let him know that you are here. He will start seeing who else he can free up. But again, it will be at least three to five minutes. He will, however, touch base with you to make sure you’re taken care of.
The manager in this scenario now owns the relationship. It’s his job to make sure someone assists the customer as soon as possible. It’s also his job to reset the customer’s internal clock back to zero. The manager should check back with the customer (wherever the customer has wandered in the store) after approximately three to five minutes (the time expectation initially offered) to give that customer a status report or the help the customer came for.
So here is what happened in this scenario. The customer walked into a busy store and assumed he would wait an eternity, which, with few exceptions, would be the case at any other store. The experience at the Apple Store was different, however, because the customer felt appreciated as soon as he stepped inside. His internal clock had been reset, and the pace of his life slowed down. This is a critical psychological concept. A simple acknowledgment gives the customer the feeling that he is in the game. The customer knows he has been seen and is part of the “lineup.” If the customer is not greeted and has to wait three minutes, the scene turns ugly very quickly. The customer becomes agitated. Pent-up frustrations from the day rise to the surface, and everybody loses. But just from having been greeted and acknowledged, the customer is willing to wait patiently for quite a while.
When Melinda, the Apple employee, told the customer that it would take three to five minutes before she could help him, she set the customer’s clock to zero and his “timer” started again. The
customer then started playing with the iPad, which was powered on, working, and loaded with applications. (Broken devices are fixed or replaced immediately in Apple Stores. How often do you find this attentiveness in other device stores? Not often.) Perhaps the customer discovered something on his own that he didn’t know before about the iPad. His internal clock got reset again. When other Specialists or employees walked by the customer, some smiled and said hello. The customer doesn’t realize it, but his internal clock got reset yet again. Finally, the manager walked over after several minutes to reset the clock one more time.
