Page 119 - The Apple Experience

This five-step approach is a proven winner, and since Steve Jobs once said,
“Good artists copy; great artists steal,” let’s steal a page from the Apple

playbook and review the five steps of service in more detail.

The Apple Five Steps of Service

Step One: Approach Customers with a Personalized Warm Welcome

The key words in this first step are approach, personalized, and warm.

Apple employees are empowered to interpret the greeting to fit their
personality and to give the customer the type of attention the customer

desires. Some customers just expect a smile as they walk toward the back of

the store to buy new headphones, while others are there to buy a Mac for the

first time and would like a deeper, more personalized and educational

experience. The key is to make sure that customers are greeted by a friendly

face that makes eye contact and is committed to creating a customized,

unique, and meaningful experience each and every time.

Approaching customers with a warm welcome makes common sense, so

it’s baffling to find so few businesses that adopt this strategy. It’s not that
different from inviting someone to your house. When someone knocks on

the door, do you simply open the door, walk away, and ignore that person? If

so, please don’t invite me to one of your parties! How would it make you feel

to enter a home only to find your friend or the host of the event sitting on

the couch watching television without smiling or even acknowledging your

arrival? You would turn right around and leave, wouldn’t you? It’s rude,

obnoxious, and borderline abusive. Yet most of us, as consumers, put up with
this treatment all the time from retail stores and companies of all sizes. If you

call a company and you rarely, if ever, get a live person on the line, then you