I was doing some research for work this past week on the topic of customer loyalty and customer satisfaction. It got me thinking about companies that I am loyal to. I’m a loyal Apple user, I’m pretty open about that. I’m also generally fairly anti-Microsoft, with a few exceptions, I love my Xbox 360, and I think Window 7 is pretty sweet. I have tons of Apple products and I generally clamor for the newest, sexiest Apple hardware released. I’ve had some problems along the way, albeit not as many as when I was a PC user BUT in spite of Apple’s customer service rankings I began to think about my own personal experiences.
Apple has never offered me anything! They try to sell me tons of stuff. But there are no special Mac head discounts and maybe they know that I’ll pay full price but I just feel unacknowledged for my unabashed loyalty. Between my fiancee and I, we have a MobileMe family pack, 2 Macbook Pro’s, a Mac mini, 3 iPod Nano’s, 2 iPod Shuffles, 2 iPhones, 2 AppleTV’s, an Airport Extreme and an Airport Express. Not to mention the ipod’s we’ve had and sold over the years and the macs that we’ve traded up from over the years. We are loyal, but what do we get for this? I’ve never gotten a single inside scoop or special offer, I’m treated the same as every other person, switcher and mac zealots alike.
Like I said, we’ve had some problems, especially with the AppleTV and when we sent back our 160GB model that broke we got back a replacement that was DOA and turned out to be a 40GB model. We’re now arguing with them over the model we sent them back, which they have no record of. Every time I feel dirty pleading with the customer service guy, trying to prove my Apple worth so as to get my problem resolved. I generally list off our various Apple products in hopes that he’ll recognize I’m not trying to rip off my beloved computer hardware provider.
So in spite of these experiences I remain loyal, mainly because the hardware is sexy and OSX is such an outstanding operating system. What makes you loyal to a brand? What have they done for you lately?