Tuesday morning, I went to work, went to Apple.com over my morning coffee, and signed up for a Genius Bar appointment that evening at the Apple Store in the Natick Collection .  It took me less than two minutes to make the appointment.  A simple, easy process with a nice user interface on their website. 

When I met my assigned Genius, she took one look at the phone and said “there appears to be some water damage here.  But since it wasn’t your fault, I’ll honor your warranty, and I’ll give you a new phone.”  With that, she took my phone, disappeared into the back and within five minutes, she returned with a gleaming new iPhone 3G.  No questions asked.  I signed a paper and then made my way through the throngs of people in the store out the door.

Aside from the fact that there were 60 people in an Apple Store at 9pm on a Tuesday night (which is amazing in and of itself), I was very impressed with the quality and speed of Apple’s customer service.  People everywhere discuss why Apple is so successful and why its stock price is so high.  I’d submit it’s because Apple has taken three core values and spread them across everything that they do – from product development to pricing to marketing to customer service.  While you can debate – and many people do – what these core values are, I believe that Apple tries to make everything they do innovative, easy-to-use, and friendly.  Let’s look quickly at each factor in terms of my particular customer service experience:

• Innovative.  Apple innovated around the entire customer support experience.  Instead of forcing me to spend hours on the phone with a technician in India trying to solve my problem, Apple created a network of stores that double as service centers – so I can shop while my repair is completed.  Even though Apple didn’t sell me the iPhone – AT&T did that – and even though there was no guarantee that I would buy anything else from them, and even though the damage appeared to be something that I did, Apple still gave me a new phone … Banking on the fact that if I have good experience, I would be a return customer.  While this may not seem particularly innovative, too many companies treat customer service as a requirement rather than a relationship.
• Easy-to-use.  Everyone knows the iPhone is easy to use.  That’s one of its biggest selling points.  It’s so intuitive that a three-year-old can figure it out.  Apple took that easy-to-use philosophy and extended it to their stores.  From the online appointment scheduler to the fact that the technician didn’t put me through a barrage of questions just to get a repair, everything about the experience was easy.  In fact, the most difficult thing was getting out of the store!
• Friendly.  Apple correctly recognizes the personal relationship that people have with their phones.  When you go to the Genius Bar, odds are that you’re upset because your phone isn’t working.  When I walked in last night, there was someone there to greet me and then help manage the queue process.  The technician actually seemed to enjoy helping people fix their phones, even though she had been working eight hours and there were still at least people with broken phones waiting for her help.  I can only imagine how many replacement phones she gave out last night.

Extending what are traditionally product values to the customer service experience is what truly makes Apple different.  How many companies try to innovate when it comes to customer service?  And while many companies try really hard to be friendly, too often, it feels like a forced façade.

Bottom-line: I was impressed.  I went into the Apple Store last night with a healthy dose of skepticism about what they would do for me with a blank iPhone screen.  But after 30 minutes in the store, I left feeling appreciated as a customer, and I’m far more likely to experiment with the ever-increasing amount of functionality that Apple keeps putting into the iPhone and the App Store – even if the iPhone technically belongs to my wife.