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Apple Tops Customer Satisfaction Surveys

Mr Maui said:
I wonder how Apple would fare in customer satisfaction in the phone category. :rolleyes:
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Actually this is what makes the survey even more unbelievable!:D
Apple is selling stuff that pushes the envelope, like ipods and phones
dell just makes crappy pcs!
Granted Apple has had some problems as of late but
that's what we get if we want to live on the bleeding edge.;)
 
I used to feel special...now, not so much

There is only 1 Apple store in the state of Indiana. That store is not too far from my house and where I work. I used to love going there, now I almost dread it.

Don't get me wrong I love Apple and it's products but I used to be able to casually walk into the store and get showered with Apple lovin'. Now it seems like it's always mobbed by college students on break, the iPhone crowd and people either buying or having issues with their iPods. I don't begrudge these people at all. I think it's a testament to Apple they strive to give a high level of service whether customers buy a $49 shuffle or a $3,000+ MacPro. I'm just not sure they've scaled their support to match their success.
 
sorry but I dont think apples customer service is all that great, and I have had alot of experience with other companies too.
 
I took a glimpse at the dark side a couple weeks ago when I was visiting my sister. She had just bought a Dell laptop that was barely functional. "Sleep" nearly always crashed the computer. The instrux said to press the "wake" button to wake it up. There was no "wake" button. 9 times out of 10 if you shut the computer it stayed awake with the fans blazing. Dell had loaded the computer with crapware that compounded the problems of Vista. There was no obvious way to do a clean reinstall of the system because you had to use Dell's startup disk. Apple, with all its problems, is at LEAST 10 points better than that.
 
chicagdan said:
I think people are complaining on these boards for good reason. Apple is still the best in the business, but their peak for product quality was three or four years ago. I've found Leopard buggy, all the iPhone 2 software extremely frustrating and MobileMe a near disaster.

I don't go nuts on these boards about every little issue because I understand that Apple has been very ambitious the last two years and needs some more time to tie everything down. But my patience is running thin.
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And the only problem I have experienced is long backups with my iphone and that includes mobile me & leopard & a macbook air all which works great for me.

YMMV.
 
I love watching people whine and complain about a lack of features, only to receive a mountain of new features, and turn around and whine and complain when they have to shuffle around the bugginess introduced by the inclusion of said new features. Apple has been running at an extremely fast pace with recent iPhone and OS X updates and they've got some cleanup to do. Hopefully this is the direction they're headed with software version 2.1. We know this is what they are doing with Snow Leopard, and for that reason I look forward to the OS more than almost any other Apple has released.

Oh, and Apple has had a long history of various odd problems cropping up in hardware and software since the beginning. That happens when you're the one blazing trails. They tend to affect very small groups of people and Apple tends to handle them extremely well, though. Massive problems plague other manufacturers, they just don't have an online outlet where they can voice their opinions so well -- and people don't care anyway. It isn't news if HP releases laptops which overheat with near certainty after a year of use, but if even a small Apple problem crops up, it is headline news. That's just because the word 'Apple' draws attention and interest.

Mr Maui said:
I wonder how Apple would fare in customer satisfaction in the phone category. :rolleyes:
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Oh, at or near the highest tier. ;)
Search the web or the history of sites like this one.

For every person frustrated with their iPhone there seem to be mountains of people who absolutely love it. I've never had problems with my own -- just some of the general speed issues everyone experienced in areas like the contacts app. And that seems to have been completely cleared up for me with the latest update. Reception works great in most cities I visit.
 
DELL not so bad...

I had a DELL Inspiron 9000 top of the range laptop, at about the same time I had a Apple iBook PPC G3 13".

Admittedly I would have to say DELL came to my place of work (I traveled around a lot) and serviced my problems (my replacing anything that I had problems with) right there and then (next day service). The Mac on the other hand, had a crashed hard drive, and I had to drive many miles to take it in.

That said I still did prefer using my Mac. Not to confuse love of the OS for customer satisfaction. Or perhaps it was just I who was in a not-really-fully-apple-supported country?

Anyway, I've since stopped using the DELL... The Apple was so darn nice. I've subsequently bought a first-gen Intel MacBook Pro (had many, many still unresolved problems... overheating/Gfx/crashes/battery) as well as a newer model now. (VERY pleased with this one, only one battery replacement).

So for me I think DELL deserves some credit on their side. But that said, it was a few years ago now and I've not had to deal with DELL again.
 
Mac21ND said:
Certainly part of the reason Apple opened it's own retail stores and prefers to staff it's own employees at Best Buy, etc;. I know people (especially in forums) can complain about Apple Retail stores, but it's still a pretty good option considering what could be and what most PC users expect from Best Buy, Circuit City, etc;. Trying getting tech support from Walmart where you bought your $500 Dell.
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Yeah, and I should point out that this was refurbished Titanium from a 3rd party and with a 3rd party hard drive and memory I had installed and after spending time with me going over what diagnostics I had done and using a firewire drive to do some more, I off loaded some critical stuff that may or may not have been already backed up. Without any questions, he pulled out a 10.4.6 disk no questions asked. This support cost me nothing on stuff I did not buy from Apple.

The local private apple tech guy that caters mostly to repair work at the local universities would have charged me $80 just to look it over.

I did note one person came in asking them to install a 3rd party hard drive into a macbook pro and they refused to do it. I suggested he go online and look up step by step instructions. I thought that was a little silly to draw the line there.
 
i saw a survey somewhere that had people rate the tech support of a few of the big guys and separated them based on whether they had had to USE said tech support or not. It had dell as the highest rated for tech support amongst people who hadn't ever contacted their tech support but was way lower than apple and several other PC companies in how people rated tech support after needing it. :p

I guess that makes sense though they do talk a lot in their commercials and ads about their "great, award winning customer support" a lot more than other computer manufacturers. but that doesn't really translate into happy customers after they've been told XXXXX in your laptop is broken and it will cost you half the price of a new laptop to fix it or we can just connect you to our sales department....
 
Lailoken said:
Admittedly I would have to say DELL came to my place of work (I traveled around a lot) and serviced my problems (my replacing anything that I had problems with) right there and then (next day service). The Mac on the other hand, had a crashed hard drive, and I had to drive many miles to take it in.
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sorry, just looking for clarification. Dell came to your place of work for free?
You had not paid anything extra for such service?

that indeed would be pretty good service.
 
motulist said:
That's actually a slight bit surprising given the increase in users complaining of problems around here. But I guess if Apple is still the top in customer satisfaction then the increase in complaints is probably more a sign of Apple's growing marketshare than it is a sign of changing quality.
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Sounds like inconsistencies in the survey, and the # vs. % factor too.

As for the customer respond agents, they're pretty similar across different company since they're just 'a bunch of yes-men' for their respective companies (to a certain extent). I've met equally dumb Apple service agents comparable to what Dell users describe theirs are. :D
 
kironin said:
sorry, just looking for clarification. Dell came to your place of work for free?
You had not paid anything extra for such service?

that indeed would be pretty good service.
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If you buy a corporate PC, the corporate warranties from companies like Dell and HP cover onsite service for 1-3 years, parts and labor.

And usually next day. If you're too far out of town, you get 3-5 day onsite service. Too far out of town is like 3-4 hours away from any decent sized city. So that's still a hell of a range.
 
I only have good things to say for Apple's customer service.

Apple store waived my restocking fee when I wanted to return 8 GB iPhone for 16 GB.

Needed keyboard and USB port fixing on MBP with 3 days fixing time...they ended up fixing in a few hours and not only did they fix that, they replaced my entire screen (before: screen burn...after: no screen burn).
 
Decrepit said:
If you buy a corporate PC, the corporate warranties from companies like Dell and HP cover onsite service for 1-3 years, parts and labor.

And usually next day. If you're too far out of town, you get 3-5 day onsite service. Too far out of town is like 3-4 hours away from any decent sized city. So that's still a hell of a range.
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Also, if you have CompleteCare, they'll come and visit.

My Inspiron 9300 is almost 3 years old and that thing plays the Orange Box and COD4 at near-highest settings at 1920x1200. I dislike Windows, but the laptop has served me well.

But to stay on topic: customer satisfaction. I'm satisfied with the hardware, and the warranty has good coverage, but talking to those outsourced India techs is a terrible pain in the ass. For example, I was on my computer and spilled a beer on it. Insta-fry. Logged into Dell support through a chat, and the parts were on the way 20 minutes later. Another example, my battery lost its ability to hold a charge, and 3 hours of talking to annoying techs on the phone and they still wouldn't own up to the issue.

Real hit and miss with them.
 
I am not surprised..... while I never had to actually use Apple support, my overall experience with apple and there products have been good. The guys in Durham are a great help, but I wish CompUsa in Greensboro, NC never closed and apple would hurry up and build the Greensboro location. Man that Apple guy at CompUsa was the best.

Fornell believes that part of Apple's climb in customer satisfaction has been due to a particularly poor response to Window's Vista, which may have contributed to drops in the satisfaction of rival companies.
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I am a little perplexed by the above statement and how it rates with Dell (other than dropping Dell's satisfaction even more; because they run Windows). Dell does not make vista, the only assemble random pieces of hardware into a unit. However, Dell's customer service does stink - and if you read any of my posts on other threads you will no why (i'lll save you all the re-hash)....

But truthfully, anytime I had to talk to someone at an apple store they were more than helpful. I even went into an Apple store onetime and the store was jammed back due to having a seminar (man the Durham store needs to expand its floorspace or move their seminars into the the old Sharper Image bay next door, now that they are out of business). I kinda just peaked at what they were going over. An Apple rep saw me, ran and got a chair and siad "here have a seat". I told him nah, I already use what he is going over. The rep then told me this seminar is going on for an hour and he will be covering a lot more.

Everytime I deal with the Durham Store, I have a good experience. My only complaint is they need more store space in order to stock more software and also turn the A/C down a bit. there are so many people in the store and so many coming and going, it is always hot and humid in there.

When was the last time you saw Dell or HP having seminars, giving personal shoping experiences, taking time to go over an entire machine with you before you buy, and then supporting you well afterwards.

Now that I switched and have 2 macs. I very very highly doubt that I would ever use Windows as my main OS ever again (there are still a few specialized apps that I need for work that only run on windows). and I will only use Apple Hardware.

Oh, and all my Dell complaints - I was on XP SP2. I never went with Vista, the vista capable machine I had, well. when I ran MS's Vista compatibility check, it came back and said I was lacking 3 key hardware pieces. So much for Dell selling me a machine that they claimed I could upgrade to Vista. Thank God that machine is Dead and I never have to deal with Dell again.
 
Decrepit said:
If you buy a corporate PC, the corporate warranties from companies like Dell and HP cover onsite service for 1-3 years, parts and labor.

And usually next day. If you're too far out of town, you get 3-5 day onsite service. Too far out of town is like 3-4 hours away from any decent sized city. So that's still a hell of a range.
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Well, I work out of my home and have a corporate machine supplied by the company I work for. It blew a bunch of parts at different times.

Here is what occured.

1. Dell shipped the parts to a 3rd party contracted company.
2. the 3rd party company shows up and installs the parts.
3. The 3rd party sees the machine will power on and leaves (they do not take into account software issues).

after he leaves and the OS start loading; I start getting a bunch of other problems - more bad components. Dell ships the parts to the same 3rd party company and they dispatched the same rep. He come back replaces those parts, sees it is powering up and leaves. More errors - this time due to he forgot to plug in the CD drive power, and the IDEE was going nuts trying to access it. Also, he forgot to do something else. I had to open the case myself and reseat some stuff - I could've done the install my self and saved the hassle.

In the mean time I had a few conversations with the guy. He tells me.

1. Dell just shipped him the parts. they (DELL) outsource all their service so he does not work for Dell, he works for a company contracted by Dell.

2. He is not even Dell certified. Turns out since they are the only company in the area that agreed to take on a Dell contract, they don't have to be. all they have to know is how to assemble PC's and A+ is optional, as the customer works with Dell on the diagnosis, Dell ships the parts to someone who just puts them in. Their only job is to make sure the machine powers up after (ie gets past bios) and they are out the door.

So, what is the point of having corporate PC if you have to end up doing it yourself anyway, and the 3rd party is not responsible for the total outcome.
 
Decrepit said:
...Apple's warranty and service are awful. It's a good thing the computers tend to run so well so you don't find out how bad the service is.
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You got a point. I guess it all depends on whom you're being transfered to. Some techs are good, some are bad. I had mixed experiences with Apple's warranty. One thing for sure 'tho, for me, the Apple's hardware (used to be) rock solid!
 
morespce54 said:
You got a point. I guess it all depends on whom you're being transfered to. Some techs are good, some are bad. I had mixed experiences with Apple's warranty. One thing for sure 'tho, for me, the Apple's hardware (used to be) rock solid!
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Apple hardware is not only rock solid; I've used Apple warranty services a couple of times and they were EXCELLENT, as the report can confirm.
 
gcmexico said:
apple customer support is good..but I must say some geniuses are straight up morons:D
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is that humor?

I don't think that's exactly fair. I don't expect these guys to be engineers. They are mostly fairly young. I have been messing with computers since the 70's and the first Apple I played with was an Apple IIe in a lab. I am not their typical customer and from what I have seen they do a pretty good job considering. I have seen some pretty idiotic customers and they seemed to take it pretty well in stride and stay in a very helpful mode.

that said, yes calling them geniuses has always been PR crap.

but it's harmless compared to assuming M.D.'s can't be morons.
 
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