After voicing my concerns with Apple and the Mac Support Store on separate occasions, my plight was quickly resolved. Another customer perspective: anger and frustration when bringing in a complaint to your brand won’t get you anywhere. Master the art of complaining and you’ll get more than what you asked for without trying too hard.

Apple responded quickly by replacing and upgrading my Mac Book Pro, while the Mac Support Store sincerely apologized for depending on the reseller and third-party guidelines without examining what would be a better experience for me, their manufacturer’s customer and their customer. They failed to ask the question “how can the Mac Support Store” live to its mission while upholding the brand experience standards of the manufacturer they represent?

If I were Apple what steps would I look into to ensure that the Apple Customer Care experience extends to the Apple Reseller Experience? Here are my recommendations:

• Review their reseller work-flow process. An obvious breakdown between the reseller and the Mac Depot.
• Put in place a Reseller Customer Service Compliance Standard
• Require reseller training. Apple should charge for this in my opinion, make it part of the reseller agreement.
• Quarterly check-ins
• Random customer polls serviced by resellers
• Reseller performance review
• Non-reseller compliance should lead to points deducted from a reseller’s performance. Once a threshold is reached that contract should be cancelled. Gives a reseller incentive to truly focus on meeting the Customer Compliance Standard.

Sounds very cut-throat and restrictive for resellers, but if I were a brand like Apple I would do everything in my power to ensure that proper brand management at every possible customer contact point is available. After all, I AM Apple.

How are you managing your brand’s customer experience?

~ jessica valenzuela

It is a blessing that I’m very good at backing-up with Time Machine! Immediately rang Apple Customer Care my worried voice received with an impressive response from the Apple Care Customer Service agent who walked me through the process of restoring the screen. It didn’t go into cardiac arrest. Screen simply went blank. We’re guessing the video card is toast. Unable to revive the screen with the usual help desk tests my next option was to take it to the closest genius bar, which was at least an hour away in Portland, Oregon or wait till I get back to New York City. I had to endure two days of not hearing that familiar sound when you turn on a Mac product. Kiting filled in the gap and eased my worry.

Back in New York, first thing on the list was to drop off my ailing Mac Book Pro to the Mac Support Store, an authorized reseller for Apple since an immediate appointment at the genius bar was not available. I expected it to be an in and out arrangement by going to the Mac Support Store. This assumption and trust I placed on them being an extension of the  Apple brand, I discover three weeks later and with a $300++  loaner fee was an error on my part. This is where the irritation sets in.

The Mac Support Store promised an approximate 1.5 week delivery of my Mac Book Pro, three days FREE assessment and five days of actual repair. The only diagnosis of a communication they send you is email, so if you missed it tough luck! It just means your repair will take longer and if you took a loaner, it means you’ll probably end up with rental fees enough to pay for a new machine! It just happened I was out in Montauk for another long weekend and missed the email. I finally get around to calling the Mac Support Store when I got back only to find out that they’ve been waiting for my go ahead to send in the Mac Book Pro to the Mac Depot, oh and by the way do you want to keep the loaner? I said yes, quite frustrated with myself.

On the third week, this time I am genuinely peeved. At each follow-up (twice a day this past week), Mac Support Store asked me to call back or they would promise to call me back, which NEVER happened. At the end of each conversation I would be asked by a cold robotic voice on the other end of the line, by the way do you want to keep the loaner? Finally some sense kicked me in the behind, I said yes, but please can you give me the case number so I can personally follow-up on this. Reluctantly, the Mac Support Store gives me the case number.

Yesterday, my plight came to an end. First contact with Apple’s Customer Care after explaining my situation in less than five-minutes and ten-minutes of fact-checking into their system Nicole Massey (my Apple Customer Care hero of the day!) said, we will replace your Mac Book Pro with a brand new one and upgrade its memory, battery life, etc. It was painless and a new Mac Book Pro is on its way! Bravo to the Apple Customer Experience, specially when you have Apple Care! )

The point of this post, should Apple allow third-party vendors to have such an assumed brand extension without the same being able to deliver on the Apple Customer Care Experience and brand promise? A small gap that can be remedied with more training and customer service compliance from their third party vendors. At best, the Mac Support Store should have advised me to ring Apple Customer Service after the first week of delay to request for a product replacement. Well, of course they won’t do that, how silly of me…they are raking in fees on the loaner! And to you Mac Support Store, I think you need to revisit that mission  of yours:

“Help our neighbors who also own Apple products by providing outstanding local repair service.”

I certainly did not receive the help and service that you so promised.

~ jessica valenzuela