iPad developer receives phone call from Steve Jobs

Developers! Developers!!!! DEVELOPERS!!!! FRUSTRATED DEVELOPERS!!!!!!

The best thing about this story is the screen shot that shows no service. He must live in my building! ;-)

Steve Jobs emailed me today. Here's a video I made about it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynfzhHCDxUc

Job's doesn't *really* care, he makes that perfectly clear, *especially* in some of his 'direct emails'.

I think more accurately, this one guy was a little starstruck and had a smaller issue which was easily resolved and Jobs was polite and helpful.

That doesn't define his overall attitude, just this one call.

This is a good thing. As with most of the post here people seem to see it for what it is, both great PR and good customer service.

And great customer service is a generator of the kind of PR that no amount of 'creatives' can come up with. It is real and not perceived.

I'm on a user forum for O2 in the UK. It's a thinly veiled crowd sourcing wing of their marketing dept but the ineptitude and lack of basic insight is staggering. They ask questions about billboard ads and special offers and it just sums up the problems that most businesses have. They have forgot the single most important part of business, it's not the bells and whistles, it's the user experience, it's that you look after your customers before anything else. If you do this really well then they become sales people out in the market for your products. They do this for free and they do it because they truly believe in the brand, you cannot beat that kind of sales, it's not driven by wages or sales targets, marketing fashions or the latest trends, it's built on a feeling that you have a great thing and you want to share it.

The way jobs interacts with customers (and you have to admit, that any senior management has very limited time) is very encouraging and I think you can see this type of attitude in the Apple stores. It's a company wide culture. I had a problem with a mighty mouse, it was out of warranty, I walked into the Apple store in Leicester and explained the problem to a member of floor staff. He first apologised (wasn't expecting that) and then just gave me a new one, no ifs of buts, a new mouse, an apology and 5 minutes to chat with me. A great customer experience created from a hardware problem.

Compare this to my O2 shopping trip where I had to fight to talk to someone about my phone plan, was made to wait 20 mins after I had sat down with a floor staff and another 20 mins whilst they tried to work out the best plan for me and then constant interruptions between me and the sales staff to the point where I got up and walked out because I was not being looked after. They failed to realise I was spending £xxx's a year with them and didn't seem to want to make me feel I was valued in any way.

Apple is not the only one taking this route though, I bet you all a dollar to a dime that there's locals shops where you live that, even though the big multiples have stores near them they are holding onto customers simply because they actually give a damn about how they treat people.

So, snaps to Steve, God's in the details, be it design or just looking after one customer.

I ❤  2

How many other CEO's would do this? I can't really think of any that would get this involved. I ❤ 

LMAO I freaking

But the guy's usability problem wasn't solved. He removed the offending private API and thus removed the feature that made the app more usable. This guy was just wooed by Jobs calling him.

Why can't it be both customer service AND marketing.
A good attitude towards customers and partners IS a part of a company's business strategy (or "vision" if you like that term better). Apple's whole raison d'etre has always been to create a good customer experience from the first point. That is an attitude that has to come from the top and be spread all through a company or otherwise it just turns into marketing slogans. And the companies which practice this kind of philosophy generally don't actually advertise this philosophy. It's just part of running their business.
It also allows you better profit margins and having more fun at work in general. And you end up with happier customers. Awesomeness all around!

So Steve calls someone up because he sees that they can solve a problem easily. Solve problem, success story, good for Steve, good for Ram, good for customers and good for Apple. And Steve was probably pleased with the whole thing in all respects. The fact that it was a good thing doesn't mean that it wasn't thought out..

Why are you all yabbering about marketing when its really just customer service there are quite a few CEOs around the world who could learn a lot from Apple and Steve Jobs.