I’m effectively an Apple fan-boy. I like to think I judge their products and services objectively, but when I look at the total after-tax income that goes from me directly to the Cupertino coffers, I’m not sure my credibility holds up so well. So be it. So there’s disclosure taken care of.
The latest Apple purchase is the Snow Leopard OS 10.6 upgrade. I perform the upgrade on the Mac Mini and it is, as is usually the case, a painless experience. Next up is my laptop… and here is where I have some troubles:
After post-installation restart, the Setup Assistant shows up playing that outer space fly-through and that hip music—generally something you see when you set up a new computer. Marginally alarming, especially as this did not happen on the Mac Mini. I just close the Setup Assistant…
…only to see four dialogs about font conflicts needing resolving. I resolve said conflicts.
Next, I launch Firefox. No internet connection. I am on the wireless network, but the connection stops there, not making it through to the interweb. Hmmmph. The Mac Mini is connected to the interweb—but it’s via ethernet to the router. So I connect my laptop similarly—no dice. I then check my wife’s laptop (still on Leopard 10.5.8 and it is connected over WIFI to the interweb no problem. Hmmph.
- Lastly, for poops and giggles I launch Pages and it never fully initialized. Eegads. (In the end this one was a red herring—I was just impatient.)
So I figure the installation choked somewhere. I restore a 10.5.8 backup via Time Machine (I’m a big fan of Time Machine). Everything works fine.
So next up is a second attempt at installing Snow Leopard. Exactly the same result. I cruise the interweb, search for comparable reports, and find out that at least one other person has experienced these issues, and according to him/her everything was peachy after a full erase and fresh install. Ick. Not going to do that.
So I head to Apple’s Support pages, thinking this is going to end up with a phone call, long waits, conversations about Apple Care or Protection Plan or whatever, and escalation to some manager because hell no I’m not paying some $30 one-time fee or whatever.
But I see on
this page that there’s an option to submit a technical issue and have an Apple representative call me at a scheduled time to resolve the issue. Holy crap! I follow the steps and can you believe that on Sunday at 8:45AM in the morning there’s a scheduled slot open for a call-back @ 9:15. Done.
9:15—The phone rings. Alas. It is a machine. I mean, if it had been a human, a human with a profoundly calming voice, I think I may have wet myself. But it was a machine, telling me that my call was open but that I’d have to wait a bit before a representative would open it.
9:22—Amanda, she of profoundly calming voice, gets on the line. She asks me for a minute while she reviews the problem description I entered when I had requested the call. Next thing I know I’m being talked through some reasonably simple network diagnostic steps, a few configuration changes, and presto, I’m online. I was not asked to go through a myriad of troubleshooting 101 checks that I had done independently, the Apple Care conversation never happened, no escalations—it all just worked out fine. I’m even pretty sure Amanda had the hots for me.
Shudder. Now I realize that in then end this issue I had was relatively minor, obviously a known issue in their knowledge base, and had the issue been more serious I could have had a much longer and possibly frustrating experience… but when I look back on what I went through from first encountering the problem to its resolution, I’m a little gobsmacked at how profoundly awesome the experience was.
The significant differences from comparable experiences I’ve had in the past:
I found the phone number on the website without having to dig and get through front-line, self-help force fields.
I was able to have Apple call me at a scheduled time convenient for me by choosing from a selection of open timeslots.
I was prompted to choose some filters and enter a problem description so the call could be funneled to someone with the appropriate technical expertise.
The call came in as promised, on time, admittedly initially machine-aided with some (7 minutes) of wait-time before human contact.
All of this customer-centric upside is great, but if you look at its impact on the entire customer support process—and if I assume that it has a comparable effect for most incoming issues—it must significantly reduce the operation overhead and cost for Apple as well. So fan-boy or not, I don’t think I need to tell you how I like them apples.
You’d be right to call out the fact that the battery was a bit of a lemon, having degraded to the point of unusability after only about a 100 recharges, and that hell yeah Apple should replace the battery. But the fine print suggests that they don’t have to. But they did anyway.
Compare this against my experience with TD Insurance.