Creating Value for the Customer the Human Way: The Apple Case Study

“When we add value to the customer, he comes back and adds value to us: by buying, buying more, telling others, and re-buying.” Gautam Mahajan

Steve Jobs built Apple into a phenomenal Human-Centric organization. When you study the company, you find a company that is highly intentional when it comes to how it treats its employees and customers. This, I believe, is the major reason behind its phenomenal success.

Apple understands that business is all about humans and selling to them. They create value along the customer value chain that way they not only create but also keep and preserve customers’ value.

While most companies measure success based on financial statements, market rates of growth, projections of market share, revenue, and profit, Apple measures success on customer satisfaction. They understand that once the customer is satisfied, all other things will fall into place.

When a company focuses on customer satisfaction, they do everything they can to ensure their customers are satisfied thereby driving retention and word-of-mouth marketing. Apple is one company that understands humans and how they behave. They do the right thing to trigger the behavior they want.

“My simple proposal is to think of Apple (and any company) as a customer creator. It creates and maintains customers. The more it creates, the more it prospers. The more customers it preserves the more it's likely to persevere. The measure of performance for a company is not easy to obtain. It’s not a line item in any financial report.” Horace Dedieu, publisher of the Asymco Blog

Apple Exists to Enrich Human Lives

In his bestselling book, The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, he discussed the Law of Connection. It states that Leaders touch a heart before they ask for a hand. For Apple to be effective in its relationship with its customers, it has to first connect with its employees and customers.

They can’t move their people and customers to act on their behalf without first touching the hearts of their employees and customers. They are all human.

Apple aims at the heart or emotions first instead of employers’ engagement and their customers’ wallets. It touches the heart of its employees to get engagement and the heart of its customers to get loyalty and profits.

Apple touches the lives of its customers only after touching it’s employees.

“When you enrich the lives of your employees, they are more engaged in your business, are less likely to leave and offer better customer service. When you enrich the lives of your customers or clients, they will reward you with business and, more importantly, become your most ardent fans and actively promote your business to others.” Carmine Gallo

Building Relationships

Ron Johnson said, “The most important component to the Apple experience is that the staff isn’t focused on selling stuff. It’s focused on building relationships and trying to make people’s lives better.” A relationship is the fiber that holds an organization together. It determines the strength of the organization.

For an organization, it will have to manage its relationship with all its stakeholders but most especially its relationship with its employees and customers. These two vital relationships are pivotal to its success.

All business success depends on relationships. You create and deliver value to the people you relate with in other to capture value from them. The best companies understand how to leverage relationships with their stakeholders for their continual growth.

It is through making the most of its relationship with employees and customers that a company is able to experience increasing growth and achievement of its goals.

Apple builds relationships with its employees by inspiring and empowering them to do much more than they ever imagined doing. As a result, Apple’s employees return the favor by being fully engaged and taking care of their customers and the business.

Apple also builds relationships with customers by improving their lives. They build good relationships with their employees so their employees can deliver great experiences to their customers.

Focus On The Customer

Apple has a clear sense of focus when it comes to its customers. They have to say no to 1000 things to bring value to the customers. They also have to remove many unimportant things that will distract from their customers getting value.

Steve Jobs said, “We’re always thinking about new markets we could enter, but it’s only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that are important.” When you focus on the customer, you empathize with them and understand what value means to them.

To create value for its customers, Apple came up with a one-paged document called, The Apple Marketing Philosophy which highlights three guiding principles:

1. Empathy: Apple will understand the needs of and the feelings of its customers

2. Simplicity: Apple will focus, even if it’s saying no to 1000 good ideas to eliminate unimportant opportunities to serve its customers.

3. Influence: Apple will create and influence the impression it wants people to form about it.

Customer Value Chain

Customers don’t care about your products; they only care about the value they are going to get from the product. The golden egg is in the value, not the product. This is why Apple ensures that its customer continues to receive value from its product.

Apple knows who their customers are and what they want. So they continually create value for them. Understanding your customers and focusing on creating the kind of value they will want and appreciate is a fundamental key to success in business.

“I think people who buy Macs are the creative spirits in this world. They are out to change the world, and we make tools for these kinds of people.” Steve Jobs

Know: Apple’s product design is based on the knowledge of their customers and their needs.

Aware: Apple creates awareness about the value its product delivers to its customers. They don’t focus on creating awareness for their product but what it does.

Engage: Apple engages its customers intellectually to see how the value their product delivers can help them with a desired outcome

Excite: Apple enables their customers to emotionally commit to using their products to achieve the results they desired

Advocate: Apple engages their customers spiritually to become evangelists who join them to fight and achieve a cause as advocates for the value they created.

Any company that will create a humane way of treating their customers will end up successful. Success is the reward for treating them right.

Apple Sells Value

Why does Apple charge premium for its products? I believe this question has been on many people’s minds. The most straightforward answer is that for any product a customer buys from Apple, the customer gets multiple values from it. Apple charges for the values not just the product.

Apple creates and sells value. Every activity it gets involved in is focused on creating and selling value. For every product of Apple you purchase, you get multiple value sold to you.

1. Product Design – selling capability.

“People don’t just want to buy personal computers anymore. They want to know what they can do with them, and we’re going to show people exactly that.” Steve Jobs

2. Marketing – selling education

Steve Jobs connects marketing and value. He said marketing is all about value. Apple engages in educational marketing more than any organization.

3. Sales – selling relationship

Selling to Apple is about building relationships not closing. This is why their salespeople are not paid commissions and are not trained to push or pressure people to buy from them.

4. Customer Experience Design – selling happiness

Apple doesn’t just design experience for the sake of it. They design their experience to make customers happy. They focus on delivering emotional value to the customers.

5. Customer Service Design – selling satisfaction

Apple amazes its customers through the service they render to them. Service provides the highest level of satisfaction to their customers. When customers are wowed, they become advocates for the product.

6. Purpose Design – selling a dream or cause

Apple starts with Why. It ingrains its purpose into everything it does. It delivers spiritual value to its customers that makes them feel they are part of a mission that is bigger than life. This value pulls people to buy their products as a way to become part of the cause.

Your company should become like Apple, a Human-Centered Organization. Get in touch and let’s discuss.