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Apple Falls Behind Microsoft, Samsung, and Sony in New Consumer Experience Survey

MacRumors

MacRumors

macrumors bot
Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
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Apple slipped behind Samsung, Sony and Microsoft in a 2014 customer experience survey from Forrester Research (via The Wall Street Journal). This is the third annual survey, and the first time Apple has fallen behind these rival companies.

The survey measures customer experience, which involves difficult-to-define criteria based on how a customer feels about his or her interaction with a company. Forrester queried 7,500 consumers about their retail and customer support experiences and used the responses to assign each company a customer-experience index score.

forrester-customer-experience-2014.jpg
Amazon scored highest among the 17 consumer-electronics manufacturers operating in North America. It was the only manufacturer to garner an "excellent" rating of 91 for Kindle customers.

Sony came in second with a rating of 83, while Microsoft and Samsung followed one point behind at 82. Apple scored an 81. All three brands rated below Apple in the 2013 survey.
Click to expand...
Though it slipped behind the competition, Apple still improved its score in the 2014 survey and earned a "good" score according to the survey's criteria.

Apple has struggled somewhat with the continually increasing volume of customers visiting its retail stores for sales and support, particularly under the leadership of former retail chief John Browett. Browett was ousted as part of a management restructuring after spending just six months on the job, during which Apple's retail unit saw staff cutbacks and an emphasis on profits erode the customer experience and employee satisfaction. After nearly a year and a half without a retail chief, Apple will see Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts take the helm in the coming months to oversee both retail and online store operations.

Article Link: Apple Falls Behind Microsoft, Samsung, and Sony in New Consumer Experience Survey
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2014/01/21/forrester-consumer-experience-survey-2014/
840quadra

840quadra

Moderator
Staff member
Feb 1, 2005
9,256
5,968
Twin Cities Minnesota
The lagging supply of new products is honestly killing their image. I can't recall seeing as many complaint threads (across the web not just here) about people waiting for new phones, ipads, and even some newly released computers within the past year.
 
SmileyBlast!

SmileyBlast!

macrumors 6502a
Mar 1, 2011
654
43
I wonder if some of this was due to the shaky start that iOS 7 had...
Plus the initial shocked reaction to the new OS. :confused:

Still they are very close to the 2nd placers.

Hope this is not a trend.
 
nagromme

nagromme

macrumors G5
May 2, 2002
12,546
1,196
I'm not sure what narrow slice of "exprience" this is supposed to be, but it fails the sniff test. I'll take this with major salt, as my Android-loving, Apple-hating friends curse at their flagship Android phones trying to do simple things and tolerating major problems like a lack of software updates.

As for retail, my experience there has remained astonishingly good, whether for shopping or Genius Bar.
 
Vanilla35

Vanilla35

macrumors 68040
Apr 11, 2013
3,344
1,453
Washington D.C.
It's because of iOS7.

Maybe if:

1) The UI appealed to more people (the sterile extra flat design turns some people off - Google Android managed to produce a more exciting flat design)
2) The OS performed as well as the predecessor (although this is fixed in 7.1)

Not to mention how badly the iPad's software was/is performing (which is most of their market). They launched iOS for iPad while it still felt like a beta. Hell, my iPhone 5S still runs iOS7 like it's a beta. Crashes every once in a while and I still see bugs daily. Not happy buying the latest specs and still having the software run poorly.

On a side note, my local apple store smells like a Zoo everytime I go in there. The first time it happened I thought maybe some baby just peed everywhere. I've been in there 8+ times since (over the course of 2 years) and it smells the same every time. Disgusting
 
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C

cameronjpu

macrumors 65816
Aug 24, 2007
1,367
78
SmileyBlast! said:
I wonder if some of this was due to the shaky start that iOS 7 had...
Plus the initial shocked reaction to the new OS. :confused:

Still they are very close to the 2nd placers.

Hope this is not a trend.
Click to expand...

Apple actually improved from last year, frankly, this is a very curious survey that has found all of those other companies posting extremely strong (and similar) rises in the past year. Microsoft in particular
 
roadbloc

roadbloc

macrumors G3
Aug 24, 2009
8,784
215
UK
They did say iOS 7 was going to be polarising. Unfortunately, the rest of the tech companies released awesomeness while Apple was busy 'polarising'. I feel both Android, Windows Phone and even BBOS10 are much better than iOS.
 
X

Xerotech

macrumors 6502
Jul 22, 2011
418
5
2011 cMBP over heating issues.
2012 rMBP image retention/ghosting.
iPhone 4 Flawless.
iPhone 4S constant sim failure problems.
iPhone 5 unresponsiveness.

The reason I stick with Apple is their unbeatable support and warranty policy. They've always corrected what is wrong, but I sure had a batch of issues.

Amazon has great support, constantly gives you discounts when a problem arises, 2 day prime shipping, over nights a brand new product and pays for return shipping of a defective product. They are expanding around the country, building more hubs and investing a majority of their razor thin profits back into the company.
 
S

scottishwildcat

macrumors 6502
Oct 24, 2007
292
364
nagromme said:
I'm not sure what narrow slice of "exprience" this is supposed to be, but it fails the sniff test. I'll take this with major salt, as my Android-loving, Apple-hating friends curse at their flagship Android phones trying to do simple things and tolerating major problems like a lack of software updates.
Click to expand...
They bought the wrong ones then. As a happy owner of two Macs, an iPad, an iPod and an AppleTV, I'm now on my third consecutive Android phone (this time, a Moto G) and frankly, it's an awesome phone for half the price of an iPhone. It's also just been updated to the latest Android OS, and it plays perfectly happily in my otherwise-Apple infrastructure, syncing with iTunes and beaming stuff to my AppleTV, as did my previous two HTC phones.
 
B

BigBeast

macrumors 6502a
Mar 6, 2009
643
39
Steve was right when he said that people don't know what they want until you show them, but he could have gone further. Once people get what they want, few of them will actually make an effort to learn how to use what they purchased. This is why Apple's ratings are lower– because people project their inadequacies in product knowledge upon Apple, rather than themselves. Consumers blame Apple for the problems they have with their devices, when 95% (a trumped up percentage) of a user's problems arise from incomplete/incorrect product/technical knowledge. Don't blame Apple; make an effort to learn.
 
McTaste

McTaste

macrumors 6502
Jan 21, 2014
346
602
This doesn't surprise me. Going to the Apple store is always a crowded mess. And the fact that employees seem to have narrow job descriptions means that there are generally a handful of them doing nothing while I wait for someone who can help me do something simple (ie exchange broken earbuds).

Compare this to Amazon, who doesn't have a physical presence but goes out of its way to make customers happy, and it makes sense that they are leading this survey.
 
G

goodcow

macrumors 6502a
Aug 4, 2007
749
1,001
Apple had my iCloud account in "troubleshooting mode" with a temporary, randomly generated password for over a month and still didn't solve my issue, they just finally told me it was a "known issue," and they're working on it.
 
harperska

harperska

macrumors newbie
Apr 28, 2004
18
0
nagromme said:
I'm not sure what narrow slice of "exprience" this is supposed to be, but it fails the sniff test. I'll take this with major salt, as my Android-loving, Apple-hating friends curse at their flagship Android phones trying to do simple things and tolerating major problems like a lack of software updates.

As for retail, my experience there has remained astonishingly good, whether for shopping or Genius Bar.
Click to expand...

Without a good look at their methodology, this really fails the sniff test. On what measure does Microsoft go up so significantly considering the marketplace's continued rejection of windows phone and windows 8?
 
N

nathun

macrumors newbie
Jan 21, 2014
5
0
I smell something funny. All four of the other companies improved the same amount? Their lines are almost parallel... This just seems really odd to me and not what you usually see with statistics when polling large groups about completely separate things. Are they asking people how they feel about all of these companies, or just asking users of each companies products how they feel about that company?
 
T

TWSS37

macrumors 65816
Feb 4, 2011
1,107
232
Glad this thread has held true to common MR protocol:

-Article praising Apple as the best: GO APPLE!!!!

-Article suggesting Apple being beat by competition: question the accuracy of the statistics.
 
D

Daveoc64

macrumors 601
Jan 16, 2008
4,074
92
Bristol, UK
nathun said:
Are they asking people how they feel about all of these companies, or just asking users of each companies products how they feel about that company?
Click to expand...

It would be difficult to do anything other than that. It's unlikely that there are going to be many people who use such a wide range of products - those that do are undoubtedly going to have favourites, so it would be tough to get a balanced view that way.

Either way, it's the same methodology as the last two years and the results have changed.
 
A

alm99

macrumors 6502
Oct 30, 2008
319
11
BigBeast said:
Steve was right when he said that people don't know what they want until you show them, but he could have gone further. Once people get what they want, few of them will actually make an effort to learn how to use what they purchased. This is why Apple's ratings are lower– because people project their inadequacies in product knowledge upon Apple, rather than themselves. Consumers blame Apple for the problems they have with their devices, when 95% (a trumped up percentage) of a user's problems arise from incomplete/incorrect product/technical knowledge. Don't blame Apple; make an effort to learn.
Click to expand...

This.

My mom was about to have her iPhone exchanged out because it stopped ringing when someone called when the phone went into standby. At some point she turned on "do not disturb" and didn't know it and knew nothing of what it does and can do. She thought it was broken, but instead a simple setting switch from the control center from the bottom swipe.
 
taptic

taptic

macrumors 65816
Dec 5, 2012
1,341
437
California
Ok, I know it isn't right to cheer on the stats only when Apple is on top, but honestly I have never had nearly a good experience with tech support as I have at Apple...
 
iSee

iSee

macrumors 68040
Oct 25, 2004
3,539
272
I wonder what Samsung, Microsoft and Sony did to improve so much?
 
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