I resolved several weeks ago that I wouldn't write about Apple anymore. Then, this morning, there was this wonderful story on Good Morning America, and - well, when the topic comes to your doorstep gift-wrapped with a big pink bow on it, you just assume it's the will of the universe and go with it.
So anyway: this senior at Long Island University emails the Apple marketing / PR department for some info on their new releases, specifically the use of the iPad in academic settings. They ignore her. She writes again, and they keep ignoring her. Finally one of her friends recommends that she write directly to Steve Jobs, because his email address is out there, and why not? So she writes him, not expecting a reply, and . . .
Well. Wow. Some of the back-and-forth - especially the last few messages - are given here. In any case, someone at Apple - Jobs himself? or a ringer? - decided to write back to the girl, basically telling her that her questions were irrelevant and she wasn't worth their time. The climactic four-word email was from Jobs: "Please leave us alone."
I allow for a lot of license here. Apple, and Jobs, haven't commented; they've given the issue their usual lofty silence. And the student is obviously delighted that this has become a news story. She's a journalism student, after all; she went after a story, and she got one, though it wasn't quite the story she expected. But the fact remains that someone at Apple is answering Jobs's mail - and when I think of some of Jobs's other short and sweet put-downs, like "This isn't amateur hour" (also four words long, delivered only a few weeks ago in a public forum), I don't really have to stretch my credulity too far to believe that Stevie was having a bad day and decided to beat someone up to make himself feel better. Especially given that the emails are, um, written in something like his characteristic idiom.
And I can't really see that the student did anything reprehensible. Most companies have a customer-service manager sitting in a dingy office somewhere, whose role is to talk to people on the phone, calm them down, cheer them up, and once in a while mail out a nicely-illustrated brochure about How We Love Our Customers.
Evidently, however, this person was out on a Snapple break during the period when the above email exchanges took place.
James Surowiecki, in one of his excellent Financial Pages in a recent New Yorker, wrote about the general decline in customer service. Among his other observations: companies like to talk about customer service, but they really don't like to provide it. It's costly, and it slows down the sales process, and it's difficult to demonstrate that it really makes a bottom-line difference. They pour a lot of money into advertising - trying to make sales, trying to reach first-time customers - but once you're in the door, they lose interest in you. A few companies (Zappos.com is everyone's favorite example) pour a lot of energy into customer service, but they are demonstrably in the minority. (If you want a prime example of really bad service, you should go to my local grocery store. It's a miracle that I haven't actually killed any of the cashiers there yet.)
On the other hand: about a month ago, I called Cox - our cable provider - to have a new box installed in our bedroom. The whole thing went off with surprising ease; the guy on the phone was perfectly nice, and the installer was very promptly on time the next day, and the whole installation took about twenty minutes. (The guy on the phone did me the favor of finding a billing error in my favor that's been happening over the past year and a half; he made the mistake of giggling nervously about it, however, and I reflexively reached through the telephone receiver and began to rip his lungs out, and he was immediately apologetic and very nice about refunding the entire amount.)
So: customer service isn't dead. Not completely. It's in bad shape, but it's not dead.
Just don't write to Steve Jobs. He's in no mood for it.
P.S.: You can reach him at sjobs@apple.com.
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