Page 82 - The Apple Experience

customer is aware of the classes, workshops, Apple Care support, and so on.
It’s drilled into them daily. If they read it or heard it once during their initial

training, they would likely forget to bring them up. But since they are given

feedback every day, they rarely miss an opportunity to educate the customer.

A Tale of Two Scores

In October 2011, Sheila Seberg of Newport Beach was forced to cancel a

flight on US Airways because her husband had suffered a major heart attack.

The airline refused to refund the value of the $560 ticket but would extend

the time in which it could be redeemed, so long as Seberg paid a $150 fee to

change it!

“I was shocked,” Seberg told a newspaper. “It’s not like I frivolously
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decided not to take the trip. My husband almost died. But they showed no

compassion.” The Sebergs were loyal customers. They had racked up

frequent flyer miles because Seberg’s husband, Richard, was a dentist and

flew US Airways every week to Las Vegas, where he had a second practice.

He flew every week for fifteen years.

I read the Seberg story in the Los Angeles Times. Seberg had become a

detractor, and in these days of rapidly traveling social media, any negative

comment gets a megaphone. Seberg posted a comment to a social network

that, in turn, caught the eye of a reporter in Los Angeles. On Twitter the
story got retweeted hundreds of times with added comments such as “Ahhh,

just another example of US Airways glorious customer service (note

sarcasm),” or “US Airways is the WORST. Read about MY experience with

them. …” People were not only reading and sharing Seberg’s story, they were

adding their own! On a whim, I checked the NPS ranking for US Airways. I

thought I had discovered a typo when I read “negative 12 percent.” That’s