The Apple Experience: Secrets to Building Insanely Great Customer Loyalty Read Online Free

London catered to American travelers, many of whom would fly overnight from the East Coast. Above all else, those weary customers wanted a comfortable bed. Sharp searched several countries in Europe before he found a bed that met his standard for comfort. The Four Seasons offered the most comfortable beds of any hotel chain at the time, and today there seems to be an all-out war among hotels to see who has the best beds.
     
Full-Service Spas. In 1986 a Four Seasons resort north of Dallas was the first to introduce a full-service spa on the property. Anytime you get a relaxing massage on your hotel’s property, you can credit Sharp’s vision. He knew what travelers wanted even before they could express it themselves, just as Jobs knew what Apple consumers would want before they knew it themselves.
     
    Sharp was responsible for many, many more innovations. “We initiated many ideas to enhance customer appreciation,” 2 said Sharp. “We introduced no-smoking floors. We anticipated trends in low-fat, low-salt haute cuisine. We put shampoo, hair dryers, makeup mirrors, and bathrobes in rooms for guests who prefer to travel light. Each room was slightly larger than our competitors’ regular rooms, with quieter plumbing, a better showerhead, and a bed with a comfortable, custom-made mattress.”
    The Four Seasons, in turn, inspired some of Apple’s retail innovations. Steve Jobs and Ron Johnson asked themselves, “What would the Four Seasons do?” For starters, the Four Seasons does not have cashiers. Instead it has a concierge (another innovation that Sharp brought from Europe to the U.S. hotel industry). When the Apple stores first opened, a “concierge” greeted customers. Although the concierge title no longer exists, a greeter still stands at the door ready to welcome customers into the store. Apple copied another Four Seasons innovation: the bar. Walk into an Apple Store andyou’ll find a bar, just like the Four Seasons. There is one difference: The Four Seasons bar dispenses alcohol. The Apple Genius Bar dispenses advice.
    The Genius Bar is an example of connecting ideas from different fields, a concept I explore in
The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs
. Your customer experience is only going to be as good as the model you use for inspiration. Studying brands outside of your industry can spark creative brainstorms. Johnson was actually the first person to come up with the idea of the Genius Bar after listening to members of his retail development team. According to Jobs’s biographer, Walter Isaacson, Jobs thought it was a crazy idea. But Johnson was a fearless employee (a concept you’ll learn in Part I) and stood his ground. The next day Jobs had filed to trademark the name, Genius Bar.

The Three-Word Vision That Built FedEx
     
    Michael Basch learned the power of vision at FedEx. During his ten years as senior vice president of sales and customer service, he helped take FedEx from $0 to over $1 billion. Today everyone knows FedEx’s three-word vision: Absolutely, Positively, Overnight. After its first day in operation, however, FedEx managers communicated a different three-word vision to their employees:
get the packages
.
    Basch, Fred Smith, and the other senior executives at FedEx were justifiably anxious on the new carrier’s first day of operation on March 12, 1973. After years of planning, FedEx had twenty-three airplanes positioned in ten cities. Dozens of salespeople were ready to accommodate the flood of orders. There was one thing they didn’t expect—no packages. On the first day of operation, FedEx delivered exactly
two packages
! Founder Fred Smith had the great idea of creating a customer-focused delivery system based on the motto, “People-Service-Profit.” But the company would be out of business within a week if it didn’t get the packages.
    FedEx managers made the decision to communicate that vision—get the packages—and get out of the way of employees who were tasked with