My Beef with Apple Support
4 things Apple is doing wrong
Since I learned about Apple and its success such as them making over 2 trillion dollars which is, without doubt, a colossal success. However, I started blurring my understanding of Apple and this happens in many cases in life. The misconception is that people believe that if a lot of ideas are good about one thing, then everything is great about it. Quite frankly, this is where the Apple FanClub vs. Android FanCub dispute originated. One side thinks that reigns supreme on the other OS and the other vice-versa. But today I learned that this is a misconception. Here’s how;
My MacBook Pro has 2 issues at the moment (Feel free to leave a comment if you know how to fix these issues :)
- Between my relative and I, our file-sharing method using network sharing and whatnot has started to fail so that was a red flag for us prompting us to contact Apple Support.
- My “Documents” folder has been moved to iCloud so any of my documents are stuck in iCloud and we were unable to relocate them to my Mac (HD).
So far so boring, right? Here’s where it gets good.
We set up a call with a Level 1 helper and she starts to “attempt” to diagnose the situation.
Already I feel with my father that she doesn't seem to be in the mood to be helping us though it's 10 PM so who doesn't like working at that time.
After ten minutes, it was clear that she was out of her league of helping us with these problems. I don’t mean this as an insult but instead as constructive criticism that from what I saw, she was an amateur at her role. I am a 13-year-old boy and I could clearly see that the route she was taking was flawed from the start but of course I’m not the adult in the situation so my role was to be a listener with my father. This begs one of the many questions that call made me a question;
What’s the point of Level 1’s help? What are their skills and how far does it go?
Basically for the next 15 minutes, we were on hold and waited while the Level 1 technician was doing her “research.” She explained on a need-to-know basis to let us know what she was doing. Apparently, there’s some research forum for Apple Helpers where they can search up the problem and find steps or even communicate with other helpers so they can provide help to others and receive help. Now, is this fair to keep the customer waiting for this long? You tell me, readers. I’m just a kid.
Feedback
What is the feedback mechanism for Apple Support? There’s no way to report customer support representatives. The reason this is such an issue is if one Support representative gives a hard time to one customer, it’s going to repeat with more customers. It was essentially a time-waste. She wouldn’t understand or listen to whatever we asked or even tried to help her do her own job and instead gave an attitude. It’s easy to do this because they’re hiding behind a phone. If it’s a question of the Apple brand, if Samsung or other competitors ups their customer service game, Apple will lose loyal customers.
Walmart, a company in a completely different field, their feedback and services to let’s say flag an item as missing that didn’t come in the delivery, Walmart will easily refund you. You can even rate the delivery person good or bad! The experience is just wonderful if you have to report a problem.
Apple is a company with the best-of-the-best products. Why can’t they have the same excellence be reflected in customer experience? Adding a feedback mechanism to reflect on the Apple representatives. If someone writes a report saying “She/he wasn’t listening to my questions/giving me an attitude,” the report could go on their ID and these kinds of reports would be used to evaluate them. It will be an incentive for people to actually respect the customer!
Training?
Badly needed. If a kid can outperform someone’s job description, that’s a serious red flag Apple! Only hire the best and train the best. On that note, is there even training? If so, very poor.
24-hours Support
After the next ten minutes on the line, because the Level 1 technician was trying to connect us to a Level 2 tier advisor, we came to know that it’s outside of office hours. Apple has offices around the globe. So why can’t they provide round-the-clock support? Countries like England and New Zealand for English speakers are in different time zones where it's becoming the morning if not it is.
Level 1
Not only am I flabbergasted by that, but I am just so surprised at the sheer lack of training from the phone reps. My phone rep at least said that she was trained to be in the Mac department. Now if one’s job is to fix the issues of that machine for a job then you should be keeping up to date on that. Famous and creative YouTuber Quin Nelson from YouTube channel “Snazzy Labs” three years ago had a similar problem as me and he said the following line in his video that hit the target of this article;
“Every time I used to call for support, I immediately got to a high tier advisor. No phone tree. No, wait required but not anymore. I’m just a regular customer with a machine that nobody knows how to fix and I don’t know about you but that doesn’t sound very Pro to me.”
I agree with Snazzy Labs!
Is the best support reserved for Tier 2 help? If so, this has to change. If Level 1 is incompetent, then why waste the time of many customers? THIS is the ultimate question for Apple in my eyes.
Conclusion
There are many things that Apple has to improve to give the respect their customers deserve. The best time is to start now!
This article isn’t a rant but merely a collection of ideas Apple needs to fix and implement. Quite frankly, this is the truth. I’m a kid anyways!
