I had a very positive experience this past week with Apple, Inc. [1] Frankly, I was surprised, but I’m very pleased.
My iPod Touch had been acting a little flaky lately. The Touch is nice because if you are linked to the Internet via wifi with the device, you can purchase music on the device directly from the iTunes store. I love that feature. When you get home, and sync with your computer, the music is automagically loaded to your PC, and any additional artwork, video, data, etc. are downloaded onto your PC automatically.
During the past month or so, I discovered that when I would sync my iPod with iTunes, the music I had just purchased on the iPod would not sync… and would completely disappear from the iPod! I went through one round of emailing Apple and having them correct the issue by making the music available for download on my PC.
It happened again, and I went to the Apple Store (brick and mortar, that is) to the Genius Bar. They ended up wiping my iPod and setting it up fresh, and then recommended I reinstall iTunes, which I did. I would need, however. to work with the online folks directly to get the music I lost. Okay, sounded fine (this visit was great, but that’s not the part that really impressed me).
So, I submitted a new customer service request online, and got a prompt (within 24 hours) response that my order would be available for download (from “Michelle“). I was expecting 2 albums. Instead, along with the 2 albums I was expecting, I got another album that I had lost but did not realize was lost, and yet another album I had not lost and an entire season of a television show that we had purchased a couple of months ago (and have already finished watching). Needless to say, I did not need nor want to download the TV shows again… that was going to eat up bandwidth and storage before I could deal with it. So I tried deleting the shows from the download queue, but they kept showing up again, and again, and again. After a day of that I had resigned myself to manually deleting the shows as they came down.
Then I got an email. From Michelle. It read:
Dear Arthur,
Hey This is Michelle again. I hope this email reaches you in good spirits. This is just a quick follow-up to your previous request. I checked your account and noticed that your Wi-Fi purchases are still in your download queue If you have any questions or concerns about downloading the item, please reply to this email. I will be happy to help.
Thank you for being such a valued iTunes customer and have a pleasant day.
Sincerely,
Michelle
iTunes Store Customer Support
Wow! That just bowled me over… I have NEVER seen that kind of personal follow-up from a support organization. This is a great example why companies like Apple can be and are so successful. Frankly, today’s technology makes this kind of customer service a trivial task to manage, but can have a huge impact on customer experience. Kudos to Apple for providing great service during a pretty routine support process.
Oh, and I asked her in a reply to delete the TV shows. She did!
Thanks, Michelle!