Quality of Apple's industry-leading tech support declines in 2011
The findings, based on data from an ongoing study conducted by Vocalabs, shows that the quality of Apple's phone support has declined significantly over the past year and a half, and is slowly sinking to reported levels of its competitors.
As part of the research firm's National Customer Service Survey, 4,852 customers were interviewed between May 2008 and December 2011 and polled on various service quality metrics regarding tech support calls to Apple, Dell and HP.
"Apple was far and away the leader in technical support quality," writes President and CEO of Vocalabs Peter U. Leppik. "In the end of 2011, the company has slipped to merely ahead of its competition in certain metrics, and with a downward trend. If this trend continues, Apple could even be trailing in support quality by the end of 2012."
After reaching a peak in early 2010, Apple has seen a precipitous 19 percent decline of customers who were "very satisfied" with their call, compared to the five percent and two percent drops in call satisfaction from Dell and HP respectively.
Problem resolution is also on the decline as the Mac maker showed a 17 point drop in problems solved over the phone, ultimately leaving one out of every two issues unresolved. The results bring Apple down to within four points of Dell's 46 percent rate of problem resolution, and three points of HP's 47 percent.
Source: Vocalabs
In some cases, Apple has been surpassed by its competitors, as in the 20 point increase in customers who did not experience problems with the company's interactive voice response system. In contrast, Apple fell 25 percent over two years for the same metric and is now sitting in last place behind HP.
Overall, the Mac maker saw drops in almost every surveyed area over the past 18 months, including likelihood to repurchase, agent satisfaction and reaching an agent, as well as a rise in customers who noted problems with Apple's call automation and wait time.
The results are in no way a death knell for Apple support, however, and the company remains the industry leader in offering a satisfying problem resolution experience.
47 Comments
Apple is doom
As the platform gets more and more successful and user base larger, this is the sort of thing to which Apple needs to pay close attention.
Invest some of your cash into more/better customer service, Apple.
I know nothing about Vocalabs* but this info as shown is enough to form an opinion on a trend, save them lying about the results in order to pander for free press.
Apple should be significantly higher than their competition because they have so many fewer models, sell much more expensive models, and also create the OS and drivers for the HW. I'd like to see this much higher next time.* Is that pronounced Vocal-abs, Voca-labs, or Vocal-labs?
I know nothing about Vocalabs* but this info as shown is enough to form an opinion on a trend, save them lying about the results in order to pander for free press.
Apple should be significantly higher than their competition because they have so many fewer models, sell much more expensive models, and also create the OS and drivers for the HW. I'd like to see this much higher next time.* Is that pronounced Vocal-abs, Voca-labs, or Vocal-labs?
I'm gonna guess vocal labs...
That's been my experience. The last two times I went in with my Mac my experience has been poor. Not once do they ever call you for your appointment on time. They are worse than a doctor's office as far as keeping their appointments current.
The first time I took my MBP in to have them check my GPU since it's one of the bad NVidia ones on the MBP. The machine worked fine but I just wanted it checked. When I went to pick it up—they never called me—they said my motherboard was shot and needed to be replaced. Bullshit. It worked when I brought it. I took it, left and got it working at home by rebooting from the disk and repairing permissions.
The next time I took my MBA because a screw popped out. I bought the unit used from a reseller and the registration info was still showing her as the owner. The guy said he'd change it and call me when it was ready. A couple weeks passed and no call. I called and they said it was ready and they'd called and emailed—the old owner. When I went to get it they said they couldn't give it to me until they called her and when I told them the original guy knew the reseller and was supposed to change the info they finally let me have it. They did fix it for free because the hinge was a known issue so at least there was that.
I'm afraid to take anything there because I don't have a lot of faith in their capabilities. It may be because of Apple's incredible growth but the service in general is seriously lacking from what it was 5 or 10 years ago, at least in my experience.