Customer Experience Strategy of Apple — Revealing the Secret

Customer Experience Journal
8 min readNov 3, 2020

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“You’ve got to start with Customer Experience and work back toward the technology, not the other way around,” — Steve Jobs.

Have you ever looked at a successful brand and wondered what’s the catch behind it being so successful?

One such perfect example of a super successful brand is Apple.

We know that Apple is the most victorious brand in the global tech market. The company has achieved unparalleled revenue growth. As per Statista, the Brand value of Apple is 352 bn USD with the revenue growth jumping to 260bn in 2019 from 8bn in 2004.

Apple’s customer experience strategy is exceptional in developing long-lasting relationships with the purchasers. You will be overwhelmed to know that Apple’s success is not about making money but about earning the trust and loyalty of its customers.

But how does Apple do all of this?

What’s so special in its strategy that customers are attracted to Apple like a magnet is attracted to iron?

Let’s dig deeper and see the crucial points that make Apple a winner every time.

Here we go…

The Synonym of Success — Apple

Since its establishment in 1976 to date, Apple had never competed for price. However, people pay crazy prices to have an Apple product and the reason is their trust in the brand. But how did Apple manage to create such customer loyalty?

How does Apple appeal to customers?

Apple customer experience vision has consistently invested in redesigning its products to customer-centric features.

Here is what Apple do to retain its customers forever -

Super-persuasive yet Simple Marketing

The customer experience strategy of Apple focuses on super-persuasive marketing for building strong Apple customer engagement. Building an effective Customer engagement is a subjective matter, but buyers love Apple products and become loyal customers. Apple products speak for themselves, so they have kept the marketing and visuals simple but appealing.

Brand message through Stories

Apple customer engagement is higher than any other gadget business. The marketing team crafts powerful stories that tell the customers that they are very worthy and having an Apple product will make them even a better person. Such a strong customer experience strategy is not found anywhere else.

Innovation in every Product

Apple has created a compelling customer experience strategy to deliver top quality products and generate irresistible customer satisfaction. The company is at the peak of success because it brings the best customer experience through its innovative software, hardware, and planning great products every year.

Peculiar Apple Store Design and Experience

Customer experience during the whole customer life cycle is all that matters and Apple is very clear with that. Once, you are inside an Apple Store, you can feel the brand value through their store design.

Its store experience is simply unique and informative, that provides an experience worth cherishing every time you visit an Apple store. This draws the customers even more to Apple.

So,

Not only appealing to your customers to come to you is essential but creating value for them is equally important as well.

And Apple is that one brand that does it right, again and again, product after product!

How does Apple create value for customers?

Customers experience an exceptional Apple customer journey with its incredible design and features.

Apple’s customer experience strategy has won a million hearts, and its consistent marketing is built on some core disciplines. Apple idealizes 3 main factors to create world-class value for its customers -

Magnificent Look and Feel of Products

Apple has designed its brand in a clean, simple, and innovative way to offer user-friendly and intuitive products. Apple’s management team has framed its focus on customer satisfaction rates for smartphones, laptops, iPads, and other products.

The design team pays great attention to every detail for mastering Apple customer experience vision. The teams are aiming at prospects’ emotions to optimize the customer experience strategy of Apple.

Apple focuses just on this — ‘Customer is the ultimate God’.

And for God to shower blessings upon you always, hard work is needed.

Apple builds everything with this mindset in mind, and hence, it wins every time!

Design and utility are the two main reasons behind Apple’s success in transforming casual purchasers into brand ambassadors.

Excellent Buying Experience

If you want to understand Apple’s growth, you must analyze the brand touchpoints and customer journey mapping for building a successful apple store experience. Steve Job’s maniacal attention to detail has made a great Apple store experience with modern designs and spectacular spaces.

Every customer touchpoints yield a consistent apple customer journey and develop loyalty in the market share. This brand has created an online platform to connect with the customers and grow an incredible Apple store experience.

If you have a warranty on Apple products and something goes wrong, you can contact the customer support team to receive an impressive Apple store experience with excellent services.

Customer satisfaction ventures into the Apple stores to drive retention, gauge Apple’s business model, and increase sales.

Apple team members spend an enormous amount of time observing their customers’ using different technologies.

So, the managerial team is hiring empathetic and customer-obsessed employees to streamline the customer experience strategy of Apple.

Cult Loyalty

This is the highest form of loyalty by a brand and very fewer brands have been able to do it.

Apple is one such brand that has been able to achieve Cult Loyalty

This has been done with the help of the following steps -

1. Aspirational value

Apple creates an incredible and unmatched value of the brand in the market that the customer aspires to be a part of.

2. Excellent product

Presenting an excellent product in front of the customers. The key USP in the products of Apple is the design part. Apple’s products come in stunning designs and the efficiency of the products is unmatchable as well.

3. Sell the product

After successful completion of the above 2 steps, it is easy for Apple to sell its products in the market. And hence, people ultimately aspire to own the products of Apple at the price that it offers.

4. Create a forum of Customers

Apple does not just stop after selling the product but it stays connected with customers with the help of Apple forums. These consist of customers who had purchased the Apple products. These sets of products become the brand ambassadors of the product.

Do your CX as they do it in Apple

In order to transform your Customer Experience Strategy, all you need to do is apply the lessons learned from Apple in your own business.

Ready?

Here are some factors that you can inculcate into your CX strategy to make it better -

A vision that includes the Customer

Apple’s CEO — Tim Cook always talks about the investment in the customer experience strategy of the brand to make Apple’s customer journey hassle-free for the buyers. Apple’s vision has the vision of its customers in it and that is actually the brand’s strongest point.

And this vision is a constructive result of regular customer feedback. Hence, the inclusion of a sound touchpoint in your CX strategy to obtain regular feedback from the customer is crucial.

Customer feedback helps to evaluate business strategies and test out new approaches. Apple knows that excellence comes by executing things extraordinarily well, setting a benchmark for others.

According to the Apple customer experience case study, consumers love Apple because they feel good about themselves. Apple products ooze innovation, passion, and lifestyle.

Over-emphasis on Design

The major part of the Customer Experience of Apple comes from its design.

Apple focuses on building a superior design to establish genuine relationships with customers.

The customer experience strategy of Apple has always been a level higher than its competitors. The whole strategy is crafted such that the customers can develop a stronger bonding with the brand.

Apple is a master in crafting Breath-taking Product Designs. Its customer experience strategy is to design products that can improve the lives of the buyers. It has emphasized unique value propositions to avoid price wars and offer the best Apple customer journey to the buyers.

Knowing the customers deeply

Usually, brands work based on the simple strategy of first identifying the needs of the customers and then providing apt services.

However, Apple thinks the exact opposite against most of the brands. Apple believes that the customers do not know what they need and the customer is even not aware of the needs.

So, what Apple does is that it identifies what the customers need even before the customer figures it out — This concept is called Identifying Latent Needs of the Customers. And this is where it stands out.

Apple doesn’t waste its time on market research. But instead, Apple invests its time in understanding buyers’ persona to improve customer retention and boost customer satisfaction.

The company bridges the communication gap in between to progress solutions. The decision-makers of Apple regularly improve its customer experience strategy to deliver innovative, effective, and quality products.

Train your Employees to show Empathy and Work with Focus

Apple employees try to understand the customers’ requirements much better than any other company.

The marketing team at Apple conveys a powerful story to allure the audiences to become a part of this brand, and that is done with the help of compelling and emotion-rich stories that show empathy.

Apple employees do each of their tasks with sincerity and focus on keeping the customers' priority as their ultimate goal. Whether it is designing a new product, testing it, or marketing it, all of this is done with utmost delicacy and focus.

Creating such a mindset of your employees and aligning them with your brand’s vision and values is the key step towards directing them to reveal the best results.

Conclusion

Apple is the most excellent marketer of all time and delivers the best products in the global tech market. It has created a legendary focus on customer satisfaction by building a robust ecosystem.

The customer experience strategy of Apple and innovative branding strongly position it into the customer’s mind before selling the products. Apple’s customer service strategy has become the world’s most valuable plan of action to improve the customer experience.

Startup companies can learn from Apple customer experience vision for building an impeccable model to grow their business and take their brands to the next level!!!

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Customer Experience Journal
Customer Experience Journal

Written by Customer Experience Journal

CX Journal is a platform for deeper and meaningful exchange of thoughts, ideas & information related to the domain for CEOs, Brand, Professionals & Experts