claudian herero: Branding & Career Tips from The Apple Experience

Thursday, August 16, 2012

Branding & Career Tips from The Apple Experience | Business 2 ...

Carmine Gallo?s The Apple Experience offers a wealth of practical branding and career advice, whether you want to advance your career or build customer loyalty.

Subtitled, Secrets to Building Insanely Great Customer Loyalty, Carmine Gallo?s The Apple Experience is an engaging, anecdote-filled analysis of The Apple Stores, and how the customer loyalty they create builds-upon?and strengthens?Apple?s brand.

A revolutionary book for revolutionary times?

The Apple Experience is a revolutionary book for both businesses and their employees.

Published this April, it appears at a time when customer service is at an all-time low, and?perhaps not coincidentally?71% of employees in the United States are either not engaged or actively disengaged and emotionally disconnected from their workplaces.

The book is revolutionary because of the impact it can have on your career and your business if your responsibilities include delivering customer service during a time of social media transparency and the resulting customer empowerment.

The Apple Experience can play a revolutionary role in your career by inspiring you to refuse to settle for a job where your best impulses are muzzled, but to strive for a position which unleashes your best abilities, instincts, and passions.

Background

This is Carmine Gallo?s 3rd book about Apple Computer and Steve Jobs. Carmine Gallo is a respected Silicon Valley journalist and communications consultant.

His 2 previous Apple-themed books were The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience and The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs: Insanely Different Principles for Breakthrough Success.

Why you need to read The Apple Experience

This isn?t just another book of branding theory and warmed-over case studies. It?s filled with detailed examples of how Apple manages to recruit and develop empathetic and passionate employees that strengthen its brand with every customer interaction.

Part 1: Inspiring Your Internal Customer. The 7 chapters in Part 1 take you through the employee selection process, including the specific qualities that Apple looks for in terms of idealism, empathy, knowledge, teamwork, and motivation. In an age of impersonal ?personality tests,? I was surprised how intuitive and ?whole person? oriented the process is. Subtle cues and responses are used for insights into how individuals are likely to perform down the road in Apple?s team environment.
Part II: Serving Your External Customer. This section is for you if your job responsibilities include training and motivating others. The surprise here was how a few easily-learned principles?like multi-tasking (dealing with multiple customers at one time)?can help individuals respond in ways that far beyond ?tact? and build tight emotional relationships. Numerous specific Apple best practices are described. Unfortunately, of course, that the vast majority of employees working for other firms have never been exposed to these techniques.
Part III: Setting the Stage. The last 20 pages describe the details of the physical setting, and how it provides a stage for delivering insanely great customer service.

Throughout The Apple Experience, you?ll find quotes from Apple customers and employees, Twitter posts, and dozens of transcripts of actual sales encounters that have taken place in various Apple stores. The sales encounters bring the principles described to life in memorable ways.
In several cases, there are before & after-type reconstructed sales encounters, showing not only what happened, but what should have happened.

There?s also more than just Apple in this book; there are revealing references to other firms with a similar emphasis on customer service as well as stories that are all too familiar to those that frequently experience airline, hotel, or restaurant ?hospitality.?

The next time you encounter a frustrating customer service experience, ask yourself, Is this likely to happen in an Apple Store?

Reading The Apple Experience lessens the likelihood of bad customer experiences undermining your brand. It provides the inspiration and guidance you need to strengthen your career, build your brand, and increase customer loyalty.

What kind of experiences have you had in Apple Stores? Share your experiences, and what you learned from them, as comments, below.

Author:

Roger C. Parker is a multi-title author, book coach, and consultant who blogs daily about the questions authors need to address before writing. Ask Roger your questions about writing and follow him on Twitter @RogercParker.