April 5, 2007

iTunes: First Class Customer Service

I've been using an iPod for about a year. I had a period of not using one for a few months as I sent my first iPod to my sister. I bought another one (8GB) from Circuity City and a $80, "any reason" warranty as well.

I don't listen to music but business/tech related podcasts from Podtech.net, Small Business Trends Radio, Wall Street Journal small business reports, Business Week, Harvard Business Review and others.

Recently, I heard a song on the radio and just had to have it so I went to iTunes to buy it. For some reason I ran into major problems in buying it. I kept getting error messages.

I went in search of support and emailed iTunes via their online customer service tool. I didn't expect to get an answer. I did get an answer and the experience was much better than I thought.

I received an immediate email (automated) confirming receipt of my email. Many companies do this, but surprisingly many do not. This is an easy, no brainer solution.

A few hours later (could have been minutes) I received a personal email. After a few email exchanges the problem was solved.

What happened is that my credit card was "charged" twice for $1, but I never received the song. The iTunes rep explained that most likely this was just a credit card authorization request, I've seen this before, and would be automatically removed from my account within a few days.

Why was I impressed?

iTunes is a huge service and I sure it's easy for them to NOT provide good service, or for it to take a very long time to resolve the problem.

At one time during the email exchange, the iTunes rep could not find my user name. Turns out I had not set it up fully so they initially could not find it. I told the iTunes rep to not bother and I would just forget the $2 charged to my account and hope it did not happen again.

I'm sure other companies would have breathed a sigh of relief and moved on.

Apple didn't. They continued to help resolve my problem and finally did give me the answer about the credit authorization.

Apple - keep up the good work.

This reminds me - so many people rave about how well their Apple computers work and the service they receive. No wonder.

0 comments