An adept representation of a limited sample of the issues surrounding customer support and similar departments.
The problem is that it doesn't have to be like this. There are exceptional cases where customer support is not like this. Many of them have gained considerable benefit from investing in their customer support. One source of difficulty is that evaluation of those benefits requires very complicated (for an average middle manager) mathematics and causal modeling. There's no simple metric that measures the real benefits of good customer support, even tangentially.
Apple is actually probably the best example of a company taking a cost center (in this case, manufacturing and logistics) and turning it into a strategic advantage. Apple wields its supply chain like a weapon. It's very difficult to compete with Apple because the world has a limited supply of high-quality parts (flash memory, LCD screens, etc.), and Apple can just outbid everyone else for the entire market supply for 6 months at a time and still make a profit thanks to their fat margins and high volumes. They've done the same thing with advanced manufacturing robots, and likely again with the metallurgy and large-scale 6-axis CNC manufacturing tools. The manufacturers of these devices can only make so many of them per year, and Apple just buys all of them. By the time the market catches up, Apple has moved on to monopolizing another factor of production for some new manufacturing process.
This is why Tim Cook is CEO: he was the architect of their supply chain strategy which basically ensured nobody could build a phone at the same level as Apple. But he took what was once a pure cost center for Apple and turned it into the engine of their dominance.
I can't say I've seen the same for customer support though. It's just not a strategic advantage in most industries because only a small percentage of your customers ever call in to support in the first place.
I remember reading an article about eMachines' turnaround. It said they put their customer support and product development teams together and tried to take every customer problem and turn it, wherever possible, into a product improvement to eliminate the given problem.
They gave this concept a lot of credit for turning themselves around from being a bottom of the barrel PC vendor to becoming a retail powerhouse in the early 2000s, before they were acquired by Gateway.
Isn't Samsung the main supplier for many of the parts used in the iPhone? And that's the reason why a.) they're in the phone business and b.) they can dominate the Android market? They took the other side of those transactions so they could learn exactly what it took to build a mobile phone, and then once they had phone-building expertise, they just need to ramp up their own production and divert some to internal use to fuel their own smartphones.
Yeah, but the interesting part is that for a while, Samsung was the only manufacturer capable of producing LCD screens that met Apple's specs. Apple outbid Samsung's mobile division on those parts, so that resulted in a situation where the iPhone had better screens than the Galaxy, even though the iPhone's screen was manufactured by Samsung. AFAIK Samsung still manufactures Apple's mobile CPUs (likely under heavy NDA; like when accounting firms audit each other).
But you're right, being such a critical component of Apple's supply chain has likely given Samsung inside knowledge of Apple's platforms. As a result, Apple has been diversifying their supply chain to avoid Samsung.
I don't know that plays into their dominance of the Android market though. Samsung was already the top consumer electronics brand in the world prior to the release of the iPhone, so it's not surprising that would carry over into mobile phones. It was certainly a factor, though probably not a large one.
Yeah; it's been a problem for them. Apple has been making strategic investments in these areas trying to create a healthier marketplace so they don't have to go to their biggest competitor to buy critical components. Fortunately, Samsung loves money more than it hates Apple.
I didn't downvote either of you, but I didn't respond to either of your comments because they miss the point of mine. Yes, Samsung's been making phones forever. They have not been making smartphones forever. The iPhone was a fundamentally different product category from what phone manufacturers were doing before, requiring that competitors scrap a lot of what they were doing before [1]. And Samsung had a big leg-up in entering that product category by virtue of making many of the screens and chips used in the iPhone.
I appreciate it's not a good way to start a conversation, but do you mind my asking how old you are?
When the iPhone launched, people like me [0] couldn't really understand it. I was a top five percentile earner in the UK, but still new to that bracket having only recently left uni. I was used to mobile phones being expensive at £400 commitment, £1800 (Uk price with minimum O2 exclusive contract) was unbelievable to me.
I made the mistake of looking at the original iPhone, and seeing something that was slow (no 3G), didn't have GPS (recently moved to London, I needed my GPS-maps!) and didn't support any third party applications. It was a joke. It sold buckets loads.
The problem was before that mobile apps were a limited affair. We had things like google maps on smartphones, but not much effort went in. We had a few games, but no one was really pushing serious money in that direction.
The iPhone became a fashion hit. It was the must have for the 20-something plus who could afford it, it was a status symbol because of price. Everything about it was worse than phones on the market, it took ages to make a call, writing a text took considerably longer. It simply didn't make sense as a phone.
However it became a platform. Companies from all walks of life, some who hadn't really bothered to have a website suddenly needed an 'App' for their marketing team to be happy. This created such gravity, people thought that Android would never be able to compete.
The internals of it were not really special at all, it was quite slow, the screen resolution awfully poor. It wasn't until the 4 addressed that last major concern I bought one.
That's what "changing a category" looks like. You build something that's worse on dimensions that existing customers care about, but better in areas that new, non-consumers care about. Because it's worse on all the existing metrics of performance, existing incumbents don't believe it's a threat until it's too late to compete.
The iPhone wasn't a platform until it had significant consumer adoption anyway...the App Store didn't open until nearly a year after launch. It turns out that being a hot fashion accessory and status symbol is actually more important for consumer adoption than speed of calling or texting.
I think one of the things that made it different, and successful, was that it aimed for a compromise between a smartphone and a regular phone. (Although obviously not in terms of price!)
Compared to a regular non-smart phone it had enormous amounts of RAM and a hugely more powerful CPU, which enabled it to run a real web browser (as opposed to Opera Mini). It also allowed fancier apps in general, once they allowed them at all, but I think the browser was pretty much the killer app.
Compared to smartphones it got rid of the stylus. This made it less capable but a lot more convenient. Having to fiddle with the stylus every time you pull the phone out of your pocket was probably, I believe, one of the things that made most people reluctant to switch to smartphones.
Also, as far as I can tell, most phones in the US were pure garbage compared to what we had elsewhere, before the iPhone upset the control of the carriers and encouraged people to pay more. If the US market had looked more like Europe, perhaps the iPhone wouldn't have been seen as such a revolution.
I had a Palm Treo many moons before I got a smartphone. It was a good phone, and the 'apps' such as they were on it were "good enough." I never really got the fuss about the iPhone. And I kind of still don't, even though right now that's what I'm doing for work (writing an Objective-C iPhone App)
There were so many smartphones before the iPhone, the main thing that Apple added was touch, which allowed them to have full screens. Not like it wasn't going that way anyway, LG prototyped a phone like that a year before the iphone came out.
Not even that. Sony Ericsson P800 had a touch screen, apps, multitasking (with automatic termination of background tasks, just like Android and iOS) - in 2002! This was using Symbian and their UIQ interface (now dead).
Apple did introduce capacitive touch screens though, as far as I know, getting rid of the stylus. And they had a very attractive UI at launch. But not much was really new.
There is some more subtlety to this too. Apple's products (like most tech companies) are made by contract manufacturers, primarily Foxconn (Hon Hai Precision Industry). What Apple does different is to buy the equipment Foxconn needs to make the products. This means there is no financial risk in that equipment to Foxconn, and that Foxconn's other customers don't get to take advantage of the equipment.
Let's call Tim Cook out for what he is. A former Dell middle manager who happened to be working the supply chain when China opened up to the world. Otherwise there must be a million supply chain geniuses out there who have also figured out how to place orders using cheap labor...
AND may I add that Mr Cook caught Mr Steve's attention when Mr Cook arranged a deal with Samsung to ensure steady flow of RAM. This was when RAM shortage was causing severe issues for tech companies.
"nobody could build a phone at the same level as Apple."
People have to put their iphones in bulky cases because the screens break so easily. I have dropped my Samsung Note4 so many times, and it is fine (also, the charge lasts three days. Did I mention it is really fast too?).
I think that by Apple's "level", the above comment was referring less to design elements and more to manufacturing processes that would not be feasible for a company operating at smaller scale. An article a while ago [1] had a list of examples, such as CNC milling at scale and laser drilled holes.
i haven't had a case on my iPhone in 6 years. the screens do not in fact break easily. some people are more clumsy than others. some just prefer to have a case for whatever reason. the same is true for android phones.
Sonic.net, in the ISP market. They spend quite a bit on customer support, and use it, where they can (locally, mostly) as a feature.
Back in the day when they were reselling AT&T DSL (which they are doing again, I hear), it was a big bonus to get AT&T DSL at the same price, but not have to deal with AT&T almost ever. Let a third party deal with that and provide better service for the same cost. Win.
Full Disclosure: I've worked at Sonic.net multiple times in the past, ranging from customer support when in college, to their operations and system administration department more recently. I have fond memories of it, and count it as one of the best places I've worked, but I'm not employed by them currently.
I've never worked at Sonic, but I'll give you a hearty amen as a customer for several years. When I try to get friends to switch from Comcast, all I hear is, "But it costs more!" To which I say, "However, it actually works. And when it doesn't, you can talk to somebody smart." Not having to fuck around is worth cash money to me.
Customer service isn't a cost center. It's a value creator.
I realize it's a little bit comical to consider customer service so highly, but I have had __consistently__ excellent support from Sonic.net, and have been a very happy customer ever since literally the first day it was installed.
I have similar probably-irrationally-high opinions of In-N-Out Burger's operations.
I've had such excellent service for so many years that even when I have an objectively __terrible__ experience [0], I end up writing it completely off as a fluke, or an inexperienced or frazzled employee. I actually reflected on this the last time it happened, and even recognizing this I still think highly of their service.
They get customer service so right in so many directions that I almost feel bad exposing the rare instances that my visit hasn't been flawless.
0: Last week, in the same visit to the drive-through: "No, I didn't order those [3] shakes. I actually ordered two fries." They eventually got me the right things, and my burgers were right, but I've had that wrong too before. Almost never.
Chick-fil-a is known for this. One of my family members called the store to let them know they left out one sandwich on their order. The store manger drove immediately to them with 2 free sandwiches and some coupons. That's just insanely good service for fast food.
I've always been super-impressed with Chick-Fil-A's service even though their food is sometimes sub-par. That's why I continue to return. I know I'm going to get a decent, if not great, meal, and the service will be fantastic.
The yardstick for measuring the potency of a corporate culture is consistency over time.
Given that THREE of the responses to this question are Zappos, I'm going to venture that it's probably incredibly rare. Especially since, in Zappos case, they are essentially selling commodity products (branded clothes that you can buy from any retailer), so their only opportunity for differentiation is price or service.
Zappos has given me one of my best customer service experiences ever. $135 sandals, pit-lab puppy chewed one of them (only a chunk, still wearable). I emailed them asking if I could buy one sandal... they actually sent me a new pair, told me to keep the old ones, and even upgraded me to their premium class where it's free one-day shipping. I never hesitate to recommend them to everyone.
Zappos Anecdote: I reported a bug with handling of email addresses with a '+' in them (ended up in a URL in the email still as a plus instead of URL encoded). I gave a technical description of the issue. I got a prompt response, a notification that it was fixed, and my account was bumped up to some sort of 'premium' status (which I can't use because I'm no longer living in the US, but that's not their fault).
GitHub: I've emailed their support desk a half dozen times over the years, and each time received a response from an engineer within minutes containing an accurate and precise answer to my question.
No kidding, I had a similar experience with them, although I only had to contact them once. It was, however, in the middle of the night because it was a school break and I was up. I was surprised to get a reply from them past midnight (and at least very late in PT).
Another issue about customer support is that it isn't glamorous and usually not encountered by the typical customer since they usually handle issues and exceptions rather than the visible product. When someone mentions a company, pictures of their product, their service, etc come to mind before a customer service experience, unless it is a negative one. Had a good experience? It's usually an, "Oh yeah..." moment, at the back of your head. Psychologically, customers don't use these positive experiences to judge a company. If they have a negative experience, then that company is the worst in the world...
Zappos may be a candidate for that type of case; their entire value proposition is exceptional customer support. There is no other reason to buy from them -- they aren't the cheapest or the sleekest, but they have the reputation of going above and beyond for their customers. Their motto is "powered by service". This may be more of a marketing lesson than a customer service one, though.
Generally in B2B where the accounts your call center are responsible for "keeping happy" are worth 5 or 6 figures in revenue...tends to lead to a very different environment. Of course, at that point you aren't really paying $10/hr but are hiring "support engineers" with real salaries.
I called Apple customer support last night for the first time ever. Called to get confirmation of AppleCare support for an iPad -- I didn't buy support :(
My experience with them was the best customer support experience I have ever had. They were great. They were prompt, knowledgeable, and compassionate.
Ditto. I've had so many positive Apple experiences, even recently.
A while ago, I could walk in the store and get replacement parts on the spot. They've replaced my sister's broken computer when she was out of warranty without giving her a hard time.
Most recently I had a really esoteric thing where my Apple Developer account had my mom's name on it because it was linked to the phone I got from her... I dunno, anyways, I managed to get someone who manages developer accounts on the phone, even though I don't pay for the developer account, and they updated it for me and got it sorted out, with minimal friction, and only a small amount of time on the phone.
311 in San Francisco. Ok it's not a company, but damn for city government 311 has impressed me every time I call. People are knowledgable, available at odd hours, and if they can't help you the follow throughs have actually come through!
Apple is an example. Not current Apple, by the late 2000's Apple that saw exceptional growth. Apple was famous for being easy to replace broken products, get refounds, getting somebody smart to sell you stuff.
I walked into my local Apple store in November with an iPhone that wouldn't wake from a screen-touch, 15 minutes later I walked out with brand new handset.
Apple's still like that, its why I buy their hardware.
The problem is that it doesn't have to be like this. There are exceptional cases where customer support is not like this. Many of them have gained considerable benefit from investing in their customer support. One source of difficulty is that evaluation of those benefits requires very complicated (for an average middle manager) mathematics and causal modeling. There's no simple metric that measures the real benefits of good customer support, even tangentially.