Introduction
Managing customer relationships is a critical component of building a prosperous business. The client relationship is about management interactions with the current, past, and prospective customers (Kapooria, 2017). As businesses adapt, change, and grow over time, new terminology gets added to the standard corporate lexicon. The Apple company realized that handling customer interactions is an essential factor in their success. This paper analyzes how Apple as a brand handles customer relationship management. In addition, it also analyses Apple’s values, levels of service, pricing approach, client communication, and the use of CRM software.
How Does Apple Approach Customer Relationship Management?
Apple is one of the most renowned retailers of quality technological devices, from personal computers to handheld devices such as mobiles and tablets. The brand of Apple personifies the values of innovation and beauty; this makes it gain a competitive advantage over its competitors as its products meet the clients’ tastes. The consumer relationship is now an indispensable part of Apple’s development strategy, and it is considered when making brand feature such as the iPad or iPhone (Kaur, 2016). Client relationship management is about technology usage and a policy to learn more about consumers’ needs and behaviors to cultivate stronger relationships with them.
From the start, Apple’s co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs established a policy that the company had to start with the client experience and work backward to the technology. Under this viewpoint, Apple has established a line of products that have presented an entirely new sector to the business. The company founder believed that CRM is the basis of Apple’s success; he also functioned under the idea that customers do not know what they require until a product is finally presented.
The company has been using a customer relationship management strategy in its customer service sections since its establishment. This involves contacting clients who have utilized their products via emails to evaluate the clients’ feelings when interacting with the Apple staff. To sustain a long-term connection between the company and its customers, Apple has been utilizing CRM in its retail sector. Their approach is to educate and inform the consumers about the benefit of having their high-end products rather than being focused only on marketing their merchandise.
Teaching the clients to about the advantages of having a product like an iPhone is a core point of the company’s strategy. The company attracts customers with its product features and making them want an Apple product at all times. Apple has also used customer relationship management comprehensively by allowing direct interaction thus, enhancing their brand cognizance in the market (Kumar and Reinartz, 2018). Focusing on CRM-based marketing and targeted emails has created a life experience amongst Apple customers instead of simply purchasing. Service delivered by third-party resellers does affect the firm’s reputation. Apple decided it was not contented with this trade-off and resolved to move its services in-house. This has since let Apple refine over every part of the client experience.
Level of Services
Apple puts together a business model that focuses on customer satisfaction to create a long-term sustainable relationship with growth potential. Since its establishment, it has been offering high-level services to its customers globally in terms of quality products and good customer relationships. Concerning complaints, Apple fully informs customers about its products and services to ensure their complete satisfaction; this makes them face fewer grievances and refund requests. By offering quality products, Apple has built a solid reputation that gives the management chances to communicate with customers to explain why poor services occurred and to compensate them fairly.
Pricing Strategy
In terms of pricing approach, the company utilizes a value-based strategy to set prices. Using this strategy, the company set price based on how much its customers believe in what they are selling is worth. Apple makes them feel I-Products have been custom-made for themselves. Apple’s clients know the extra value of the brand, so they are always enthusiastic about paying for a superior product, which brings them to a premium and affirming their lifestyle. Based on Apple’s annual report, customer relationship management, high-quality features of the products, and differentiation evidenced to be the most critical factors for consumers and pricing. Apple endeavors to increase market demand for its devices through differentiation, making them exceptional and attractive to customers (Nastasoiu and Vandenbosch, 2019). Apple’s products have constantly been designed to be ahead of the rivals despite the high competition. As a result, the establishment has power overcharges through merchandise differentiation, guaranteed brand loyalty, inventive advertising, and hype around novel product launches. Besides, Apple also utilizes a minimum advertised price retail tactic, which forbids resellers from marketing a manufacturer’s product lower than a certain least price. Apple avoids this scenario by providing monetary incentives to dealers to sell goods at least advertising prices fixed by the corporation.
Consumer Communication
Communication with clients is one of the most significant factors that sway customers’ loyalty and the business’s reputation. Apple company applies different communication strategies to share all the updated info with its customers. With a customer-focused marketing approach, it is not challenging to recognize that Apple applies consistency in communication. Apple company interconnects with its customers majorly through social media platforms. It has invested in media advertising globally to provide information regarding its products to consumers. For instance, whenever Apple releases a new product to the market like an iPhone 11 pro, a short video clip explaining the phone’s features was advertised on television, YouTube channels, and all its social media platforms (Meikle, 2016). Consumers from various parts of the world can also converse with Apple officials and employees through its online chart platform, which helps them express their complaints about its products and services.
How Apple Uses CRM Software
Customer relationship management in technological view is regarded as software that assists an enterprise in handling their relationships with the clients effectively and systematically. CRM software enables the organization to create a database about its client that all shareholders like administration, salespersons, and customer service providers can access information to assess the customers’ needs with products. Apple company has a Mac CRM software that combines a cloud-based app developed with its Swift programming language. This Mac customer relationship management software involves using Apple-only gadgets and technology to organize, program, and coordinate sales, marketing, client service, and technical support (Ehrnrooth, 2017).
Apple uses CRM software to maintain consistent communication with their current customers on exceptional occasions like anniversaries and launching new products by emailing them. Apple’s CRM software has enabled the company to streamline business flow by making it easy to track receipts, customer details, mail invoices, and receipt records, increasing sales (Starinsky, 2016). It has also given the company a platform to improve its relationships and interactions with consumers and business associates. Customer relationship management software has also allowed Apple to leverage data from their database to attain customer retention and cross-sell innovative products as well as services to existing and new clients.
Conclusion
In summary, applying the customer relationship strategy in a business usually increases the client’s commitment to the brand. When you examine the Apple brand, you get a sense of the firm’s impeccable tactic to customer service. This is because the company has managed to establish a reputable brand that gives satisfaction to its customers. Apple company utilizes various strategies to communicate with its customers and maintain the relationship. The company fully recognizes the value of the customer relationship management system for its success in the market.
References
Ehrnrooth, E. (2017). The Effect of Customer Relationship management on the music industry: A case study: Salesforce’s impact on Spotify.
Kapooria, P. J. (2017). Customer relationship management: Key to customer sovereignty. Idea Publishing.
Kaur, J. (2016). Customer relationship management: A study of CRM policies of different companies. Global Journal of Finance and Management, 8(2), 153-159.
Kumar, V., & Reinartz, W. (2018). Impact of CRM on marketing channels. In Customer Relationship Management (pp. 237-264). Springer.
Meikle, G. (2016). Social media: Communication, sharing and visibility. Routledge.
Nastasoiu, A., & Vandenbosch, M. (2019). Competing with loyalty: How to design successful customer loyalty reward programs. Business Horizons, 62(2), 207-214.
Starinsky, R. W. (2016). Maximizing business performance through software packages: Best practices for justification, selection, and implementation. CRC Press.