My trusty iMac (from 2008) decided to not play ball earlier this week. It was way outside Apple’s warranty (even Apple Care) – by over a few years – but trying to fix it was beyond me and I needed help from Apple. A call through to the local Apple Store (in the Bentall Centre in Kingston) and they advised that they had no Genius appointments that day but to come in with the iMac and they would see what they could do.
When we got to the store we spoke to one of their guys who said all the iMac tech team were busy all day with no slots, but to hold on and he would see what they could do. A very friendly iMac Genius then came to have a look and ran a series of quick tests on the iMac. As typically happens in these situations, everything worked fine and the iMac passed all the tests. A number of restarts were done – where the problem had been before – but all working fine.
The guy took down all the details of the problem as I’d seen it and advised that I could leave it there for them to take a more detailed look (which would probably take a few days) or take it back home and see how I get on (which I did and typically again the problem has re-occurred and I’ve booked to go back in tomorrow).
But, the whole point to this post is the exceptional level of service that Apple provided here, going way beyond what they were obliged to do, going out of their way to help as best they can, to listen to the customer and check and test accordingly, to offer options when the standard response (booking a slot for that day) was a no-goer and doing all of this in a friendly professional manner.
This level of service is what makes Apple so great and why people – like me – will now go back and go nowhere else. It is exceptionally good service and yes you do pay a premium for Apple products but this is one of the major reasons why; it’s not just a great product, you’re buying it’s a full service experience.
It’s not the only reason of course, there are 3 reasons generally why you are willing to pay extra for a product or service. These are:
- The quality of the product
- The level of service received
- The overall experience of using the product or service
These 3 are the major drivers to creating loyalty for you business and Apple yet again are are leaders here. Fingers crossed that my visit tomorrow fixes the problem once and for all.
