The Apple Experience: Secrets to Building Insanely Great Customer Loyalty (28 page)

 

• “Apple has redefined ‘easy.’ Nothing about shopping there is unpleasant, unattractive, or annoying.”—Jan Tribbey, Victoria’s Secret
  
 

• “An über-clean, fresh world.”—Tom Beebe, consultant
  
 

• “They simplified retail to the point where it’s you, the product, and someone who can help you.”—Lee Peterson, WD Partners
  
 

• “A clean and simple environment, easy to navigate and offering ample space to experience the product and conduct meaningful conversations.”—Jason Floyd, GameStop
  
 

• “Did someone say ‘less is more’? Must have been Steve Jobs. Apple has mastered complexity simplified.”—Stephanie Picone, IZOD Retail
  

One retail consultant said he cannot think of a client in ten years who has not referenced Apple as a model for reinventing the customer experience.

Eliminating clutter also means keeping things clean. It’s not uncommon to see an employee cleaning the screen of an iPad after it gets a few smudge marks. “If you’ve ever been to an Apple Store opening,
you’ll know how meticulous they are about cleaning the windows, the floors, the shelving, and so on,” says Apple blogger Gary Allen.
⁹
“It’s almost to the point of being absurd. During the Palo Alto opening, they almost continuously cleaned the windows (inside and out) between 6:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. and then returned at 6:00 a.m. to start all over again. The same activity has occurred at subsequent openings. The cleaning crew must be the hardest-working team at an Apple store!”

Why is Apple different? Apple cares about things other businesses don’t. It cares about elegance, space, and simplicity. It cares about smudges. Most people simply don’t care about this as much as Apple, and that’s the difference.

There’s a restaurant near my office that is conveniently located and offers a decent selection of everything from pizza to salads. It also has coffee, beer, and wine. The problem is that it’s smelly, cluttered, and messy. The kitchen has a passing grade from the health inspector, so I assume the food won’t make me sick. But it leaves a bad impression for several reasons. First, the glass is never clean. There are smudges all over the front windows, the dessert tray, and even on the wine glass when I ordered a Chardonnay that was served so lightly chilled it was almost room temperature. Second, it’s dusty. The fake plants, coffee bean displays, and windowsills are coated with a week’s (or longer) layer of dust. Third, it’s cluttered. The short walkway separating the front of the restaurant from the back room where more tables are located also acts as a storage closet. A diner has to maneuver past mops, buckets, and empty boxes.

Finally,
nobody cares
, not even the owner (which explains everything). On one occasion a large party of ten people had just left, and there were dirty dishes and glasses covering a table in the middle of the room. Right next to the table, the owner was meeting with a vendor, and I was close enough to overhear the conversation. The owner was trying to get the vendor to shave a few cents on takeout cups and packages, and he paid no attention to the mess right next to him. Forty-five minutes went by before a server cleaned the table. I sat there dumbfounded. The owner never called staff over, nor did
he take the opportunity to remind anyone about the need to keep the tables clean. He was more concerned about saving a penny on a coffee cup. He simply didn’t care about what customers care about. His vision was all about saving money and not enhancing the customer experience. This lazy practice doesn’t have to be the case. A friend of mine works at a Starbucks location, and she says it’s their policy to scan the tables every fifteen minutes to make sure they are clear, clean, and ready for the next patron. Starbucks gets it. Apple gets it. But many others do not.

When this restaurant in my town goes out of business—and it will—what do you think the owner will blame? The economy, of course. But it’s not about the economy; it’s about the experience. Successful business owners care. They care about the people they hire, how they are trained, the quality of the product, the interactions between staff and customers, and the way customers feel when they walk in and when they walk out.

The infamous, handwritten “Please let us know if our bathroom needs attention” sign is typically a telltale sign that you are in a much neglected bathroom (and it won’t get better after you notify the staff). A friend of mine purposely goes to certain stores and restaurants where he knows the bathrooms are clean and orderly, because he doesn’t want to get stuck using a dirty toilet. During an interview for an article I wrote for
Bloomberg Businessweek
, I remember a story Paul Orfalea, founder of Kinko’s, now FedEx Office, told me.
¹⁰
When he would visit Kinko’s locations, one of the first actions he took was to visit the loo, not for the obvious, but to make sure customers were getting the clean, well-stocked bathroom they deserved should the need arise. Not all retail locations have public restrooms available, but the philosophy behind keeping a bathroom clean runs over onto the sales floor.

There are many other ways than offering a dirty bathroom to piss away your customers. In an article for our site, my wife,
Vanessa, posted a list of additional no-no’s when it comes to “keeping house:”
¹¹

 

• Bad Breath.
  Some people can’t help it, literally, but if you are up close and personal to customers regularly, avoid cigarettes, cough drops, peanuts, garlic, onions, and other strong-smelling consumables before your shift.
  
 

• Strong Perfumes and Colognes.
  I don’t care if your new hot girlfriend just bought you a new spray … lay off. You never know when a customer might get offended.
  
 

• Cobwebs.
  Halloween is one night only and revisits once every 365 days. Never should your customers be able to spot spiders and cobwebs.
  
 

• Dust on Objects and Shelves.
  This is only acceptable if on the set of
  The Phantom of the Opera
  .
  
 

• Wrinkles.
  Avoid wrinkles in employee attire, table linens, paper menus, programs, or anything else of use to a customer.
  
 

• Stains.
  Avoid stains on employee attire, table linens, paper menus, programs, and so on.
  
 

• Holes, Tears, and Damaged Items or Structures.
  There are places of business with wobbly tables, rotting holes in the ceiling, and rips in booth seats, just to name a few examples.
  
 

• Pets.
  Unless it’s a dog shelter or pet shop, business owners and managers should never allow animals into a commercial venue where customers visit. The only exception is guide dogs and other trained animals lawfully assisting their masters. A small dog in a Juicy Couture purse doesn’t make the cut either.
  

This is a short list. I’m sure you have more ideas to add to the list, but you get my point by now: good customer service isn’t always determined by what was said to you during your experience, but by how much care, effort, and interest was put into the cleanliness and appeal of the environment your experience took place in. An Apple Store is spotless. There’s a reason for it.

The local restaurant I mentioned earlier is certainly not what Disney calls “show ready.” It’s nearly impossible to find trash on the ground of a Disney theme park. Everyone is trained to pick up discarded wrappers so the resorts remain clean. If a manager were to walk by trash without picking it up, it would send the wrong message to staff. For a small business that might not have a physical location, this concept can be as simple as making sure your website is clean, professional, and easy to navigate. Your website is your front door. If it’s not show ready, it can make or break your business.

At Disney parks, guests are no more than thirty feet from a trash can so there’s no excuse to discard anything on the ground. It’s believed that Walt Disney was eating an ice cream cone, and when finished, some thirty paces later, he said there needed to be a trash can in that place. Disney has also found that by keeping the grounds spotless, it elevates everyone’s behavior, guests included. People are actually embarrassed to be seen littering!

Disneyland, which opened in 1955, was remarkably clean from day one because Walt Disney wanted it that way. When he was developing the concept behind a theme park, Disney visited fairs, circuses, carnivals, and amusement parks around the world. He studied the attractions and the staff. Apparently he didn’t like Coney Island because he found the ride operators to be unfriendly. Instead, Disney found his inspiration in Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen. The employees were warm and courteous, the food was excellent, the music was charming, the colors were bright, and the grounds were meticulously maintained.

There’s an old black-and-white photo of Walt Disney himself picking up trash at Disneyland. He cared. So did Steve Jobs. He cared about everything. He once said that everything they do at Apple starts with the question, “How easy will it be for the user?” This question applies to product design and the in-store retail experience. How easy
is it to find someone to help you at an Apple Store? Very easy. (You can even purchase accessories yourself with the Apple Retail app without interacting with an employee at all or purchase products online and pick them up in a store. “Personal pickup” became so popular in a short amount of time that employee name tags began promoting the service so that customers would ask more questions about it.) Everything is “easy.” That’s why Apple employees wear brightly colored shirts with the Apple logo on them. The blue shirt was chosen because the color stood out the best. It’s why an iPad is tethered to major products at the Apple Store along with detailed specifications. It’s why customers can purchase their items and check out on the floor without standing in a line at a cash register. It’s why many Apple Stores are located in shopping malls. Although the real estate was a lot more expensive, Steve Jobs didn’t want people to gamble with twenty minutes of their time to visit a computer store in a remote location. He wanted them to gamble with twenty feet of their time. He wanted to make the experience easy.

There are some old adages in retailing—pile it high and let ’em fly, or grab and go. For years retailers simply put products on shelves and tried to get people through the door. Now most large retailers have high-priced consultants who conduct motion studies to track how customers walk around a store and what appeals to their eyes. What they are finding is that most people are attracted to a clean layout, uncluttered displays, clear pricing, and simple signage. In 2001, Steve Jobs and Ron Johnson understood what motion studies and neuroscientists have recently discovered: customers appreciate open space, natural light, unobstructed views, clean stores, and friendly people. If those two men were right about store design well before the rest of the retail world caught up to them, perhaps they were right about the other components of the customer experience as well!

A
n American couple living in the Yunnan Province in China’s remote southwest corner walked into what they thought was an Apple Store. It had all the elements: Apple products, an interesting spiral staircase, an upstairs lounge, and staff in blue shirts with name tags. But the American woman noticed something strange about the staircase. It was poorly made, and it showed. The walls had not been painted properly, the staff’s name tags had no names, and Apple never writes “Apple Store” on the sign. It just puts up a glowing image of its iconic fruit logo. In the photographs the couple took and published on their blog, wires and cables could clearly be seen cluttering the wooden tabletops instead of hidden from view as they are in real Apple stores. This particular store in Kunming, China, did turn out to be a fake, and other rip-offs were soon discovered, up to twenty-two
in total. The fake stores were exposed because Apple pays attention to the details of design and aesthetics. And someone noticed.