Visiting your customer service centre must be as enjoyable for your customers as visiting your showroom. At least, that is what you may expect from a brand as popular as Apple
There is a showroom of Unicorn Infosolutions Pvt Ltd, an Apple channel partner at Oberoi Mall in Goregaon-East, Mumbai, India. When you go there, you find a thriving place with enthusiastic young employees eager to help you. You love the welcome, the energy, the atmosphere.
A few hundred metres away, there is an Apple Service Centre, run by the same channel partner. There also, you find young employees, but the enthusiasm is missing. There is no energy, no eagerness to help. You feel unwelcome, just like you do when you have to visit a Sarkari bank.
I visited the showroom and the service centre yesterday. At the service centre I was received by disgruntled employees. They were least friendly or concerned. They seem to be there just to fill in the hours. I heard the young lady saying she was in a hurry to leave by 6.30 pm (the centre timings are till 7.30 pm) because she had to go shopping for some relative’s wedding. She wanted to “finish” all cases ASAP.
The layout of the centre is annoyingly unfriendly. There is an AC leaking and a bucket capturing the water falling from above.
Add to that, the bureaucratic process and the unreasonable charges. “You have to pay Rs 1500 to get your phone diagnosed (Yes!!!). If needed, we will format your phone and check if the problem goes away. If not, then we will give you the actual estimate.”
And what does the diagnosis mean? The lady in a hurry connects the phone through Wi-fi to a laptop and after 5-7 minutes declares that the phone is not passing the test. She does not understand what to do next, so she calls a senior. Who declares: “We have to bill the customer, so you write ‘The phone is not responsive.’, issue the report, receipt and give an estimate.
Is this Apple standard? Really?
There is a beautiful Apple in the sales showroom. And there is a dirty Apple in service centres.
We hope that for Apple, customers at showrooms and service centres are the same and Apple treats sales and service as two sides of the same coin. But, the reality is different. Apple Service Centre treats customers like fake currency.
At least once In the mind of everybody visiting Unicorn Apple Service Centre at Goregaon-East, a thought certainly passes to completely switch from Apple. It is so bad.
Time to wake up, Dear Apple…!