Is Apple losing its magic? Customer satisfaction drops below… Microsoft!

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Surprising news out of the Wall Street Journal this morning, as according to research carried out by Forrester Research, Apple’s customers are less happy than those of mobile rivals Samsung and Sony, but even stodgy old Microsoft too.

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The survey asked 7500 US consumers three simple questions about each company: How enjoyable were they to do business with? How easy were they to do business with? and How effective were they at meeting your needs? – with the focus being on customer service (so we’re not talking about how nice their apps are to use, and in Amazon’s case the survey was about Kindle users, not people who have bought the multitude of other stuff from them).

As the results show – it isn’t the case that Apple’s customer service has just got worse – it is that everyone else has got better, faster. And this should be particularly worrying to them given that not only are the other three companies snapping and their heels in the quest for smartphone dominance, but that because part of the Apple allure is its “premium brand” status.

Part of the way of building a premium brand is making people feel like they are cared about, and solving their problems quickly – which is why any trip to an Apple store will see you almost outnumbered by the number of blue-shirted Apple “Geniuses”, who are invariably creepily cheery. If this doesn’t make customers any happier… why pay more when those Microsoft Surface 2s down the street are cheaper than a Macbook Pro?

Apple isn’t the only story though – there’s already one company sailing ahead. Maintaining its commanding lead, Amazon’s Kindle users are the happiest, it seems. Speaking personally this isn’t surprising – though I’ve had a couple of faulty Kindles in my time, Amazon’s excellent customer services have replaced them and shipped out a new one super quickly. The only downside is that they don’t pay their tax.

Why not let us know your best and worst customer experiences in the comments?

James O’Malley
For latest tech stories go to TechDigest.tv

6 comments

  • I am sure Apple ARE getting sloppy. They used to be a premium brand and everything worked. I just tried to download a trial copy of Final Cut Pro 10 from the Apple website. I was using the latest version of Mavericks with 8Gb of RAM, yet time after time the dmg icon failed to open the programme once downloaded. Also I noticed that their latest update of IMovie gets a miserable 2 stars from users, some saying it is ‘unusable’, ‘trash’ etc. I really think they are missing Steve Jobs.

  • I am sure Apple ARE getting sloppy. They used to be a premium brand and everything worked. I just tried to download a trial copy of Final Cut Pro 10 from the Apple website. I was using the latest version of Mavericks with 8Gb of RAM, yet time after time the dmg icon failed to open the programme once downloaded. Also I noticed that their latest update of IMovie gets a miserable 2 stars from users, some saying it is 'unusable', 'trash' etc. I really think they are missing Steve Jobs.

  • Sounds like Amazon are doing what Apple have been doing , exchanging faulty items with a smile . Try doing that with HTC or Samsung !

  • Sounds like Amazon are doing what Apple have been doing , exchanging faulty items with a smile . Try doing that with HTC or Samsung !

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