Apple: Antenna Gate & Bend Gate

Very few companies in the world have built as strong or loyal of a Customer base as Apple. They are truly one of the top 5 brands in the world Customers cannot live without. Proof of being a brand Customers cannot live without is when you screw up, drop the ball and your Customers stand by you. Do you remember antenna gate? Or the bending of the iPhone 6 Plus? Or how they fell behind in innovation as Samsung and other manufacturers passed them by briefly. However there are always limits to Customer loyalty. Breaking people’s trust through fraud is definitely a line you don’t ever want to cross.

By now you probably have heard about Apple’s battery-gate, how Apple has been secretly slowing down older iPhones to preserve their batteries. While it happened and it is old news, the technology giant is still feeling the ramifications. iOS developer Marco Arment  tweeted: “The reputation damage from secretly slowing down old iPhones, regardless of the reason, will likely linger for a decade.” Then when iPhone X came out with its Face ID feature, Apple insisted that your facial features would stay on your phone and not be shared. But then it emerged that app developers have been given access to facial data, on condition that they promise not to sell the data to third parties and get permission from the user first.

*Related – Six things that make yours the brand customers cannot live without

Donna Cutting, the Founder of Red-Carpet Learning Systems, has a fantastic employee recognition program, called 21 Days of Thank You that can really put a jump-start into your internal culture. Here are some of my favorites:

Choose one employee you want to praise or encourage. Write positive messages on Post-It Notes and plaster all over their work area.

On a paper “link,” write specific words of praise about an employee or co-worker. Share it with them & let them bask in your words for a moment. Now give them a blank chain link and ask them to find someone else to praise and appreciate.

Ask each person to spend 60 seconds sharing good news with the team. Celebrate together and go back to work!

Create a wearable trophy, i.e. a pin, star or ribbon. Give it to one of your employees and tell them specifically why they received the award today. Let them know how they make a difference. The key is though…they can wear it for one hour. When one hour is up, they need to find someone else who makes a difference, tell them why and give them the ribbon or trophy to wear for an hour. Keep it going all day and see who ends up with it!

I strongly recommend you download 21 Days of Thank You program and have your leadership team follow it for 21 days.

Watch this 30-second video on how important it is to Carpe Momento:

 

Join The DiJulius Group for the biggest CX conference of the year! Register for the Customer Service Revolution (formerly the Secret Service Summit) by April 1st to receive an $850 discount off the regular ticket price.

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