Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Off Topic Slightly OT: Customer relations

Today's news:

"while the ability to work directly with customers has helped make the Apple brand sticky among its buyers.

Apple boasts leading loyalty rankings among both PC and smartphone users.

Today Apple announced record-breaking revenues"

I am not being too subtle am I?

Administrators, if I am too far out of line or OT, please feel free to delete.

Aloha,

Customer Service is really important and if Apple are doing it right then all praise to them. I don�t think this is the main reason for their success but it is important in maintaining the momentum.
Apple caught the Zeitgeist and are riding the wave of success very well, giving people what they want even if they never knew they wanted it.

Meridian customer service should be exceptional as well but they will never be in the Apple league for brand awareness amongst the general population, whatever they do.

Just thoughts, Chris

I would say that Apple has made a commoditized product, aspirational. Made electronics a luxury goods

I think a large part of the issue with Meridian is that their "customer rep" are most often franchise/dealers. Apple reps in the stores are employees of Apple. Living in NYC, I can tell you there isn't a dealer in NYC I can stand. Everything is a big deal. Setting this up, do that, etc... Further, most will say what they need to say, to get the sale...
There is a reason that luxury hotels are never franchised, because you cannot control the customer service element in a business where customer service is what differentiates you from standard hotels.

An interesting background to Apple's "success" in the Marketplace is outlined in the link below

Worth remembering though that they still only have

** 11% of the US PC Market
** 5% of the Global PC Market
** 20% of the Global Smartphone Market compared to almost 50% for Android (26% to 46% in the US)
** 80%+ of the Tablet Market

So they are still a relatively niche player!!!

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2388591,00.asp

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2388591,00.asp

A very, very successful, cashed up and envied 'niche player'.

+1, I saw on CNBC yesterday, AAPL has $73,000,000,000 USD in cash. That is 1 large piggy bank!

Having one-on-one trainers to show grandma how to use Mail.app and "genius" employees fixing simple things went a long way to engender confidence amongst the people who can afford Mac and don't necessarily need Wintel compatibility.

This approach didn't seem to help Gateway Computer in the 80's/90's or help Dell much when they tried store fronts. M is much, much too small to envision a similar approach.

NYC has the benefit of the largest number of Meridian dealers geographically than any other US zip code, I've enjoyed dealing with Kal at HTOLI and Terry M. at Overture Audio HT in Delaware.

Lyric Hi-fi in White Plains, NY has a fellow who knows his speakers and LP, DAC technology but doesn't hold M-Sooloos inventory. There is a dealer in upstate CT that sells a lot of M-S equipment though the name escapes me at the moment.

The Sooloos developers seem to be mostly located in NYC also, but I'm not sure if that makes much difference.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14236786

It wil be a big day when this happens to Meridian. Fake Apple stores......some nerve there. Chris

I'm not sure those stats are fair really. you're comparing one vendor to all the other vendors put together. 11% of the US pc marker puts them in third place as a vendor of personal computers, behind HP and Dell, not bad considering that they don't even try to compete in the budget markets that dell and HP make a lot of sales off. Also, apple gear tends to be in use longer than windows PC's so the sales cycle is slower, making those figures more impressive.

the figure for smartphones is similar, you're talking abut a single model of phone, competing in basically the fairly high end of the smartphone market, competing against a wide variety of android phones from a wide variety of vendors at a wide variety of different price points. you're not wrong, but so what? apple aren't even competing in many of those markets. The fact is, they've gone from not making any mobile phones at all to in one year, single handedly changing the entire market for smartphones and quickly becoming the number 2 smartphone manufacturer behind samsung. not bad at all. Niche they may be, but market and game changing they are too.

as for the tablet market, I think their dominance there is such that most people aren't going out to buy tablets, they're going out to buy iPads.

david

I'm surprised that people find Apple customer service so great. On all three occasions I have had to use it, it has been sh1t which mirrored other people's experience by all the comments on their forum. Apple officially just buried their head in the sand instead of admitting the product was flawed so I stopped using the particular product as a result.

Have to agree with Ian. On the surface all seems perfect but the reality is a little different. My recent dealings with a MacBook Pro that suffered the infamous screen of death is a case in point. Now I do applaud Apple for standing up and taking full responsibility for a 3rd party component, in this particular case the Invidia graphics card, but it took a class action lawsuit to get them to do the right thing. My computer was 3 years old when it succumbed. Took it in to the local store and left it for repairs ie new graphics card. Got it back a week later fixed, but now suffering from another issue on the screen that wasn't there originally. Took it back and Apple basically wouldn't accept responsibility for causing the the problem. Since it doesn't affect the day to day normal use I didn't escalate things. Its also a work computer that probably had some influence on my decision not to follow up.

That said I have always been and always will be an Apple owner. Can't stand those flaky PC's and infuriating MS OS systems.....I only wish I'd bought stock at $16/share back in the mid '90's.

I can't claim to be in that position but for me they replaced both a time capsule and a MacBook pro power supply, both years out of guarantee free of charge.

Dave

+1 I am with Ian - I am NOT an Apple fan!