I agree with you, but I think the beginning of the equation starts with good quality and customer service should be for the those times that the product is defective or does happen to fail. An increase in quality should correlate to a reduction in RMA and customer service calls/complaints. CS should supplement, not supplant quality, but it seems to be pervading conception.
Funny thing you mention that. I had a similar problem happen with my 15" PB. My cat happened to walk across the keyboard and his claw popped out a couple of keys (one popped back in, but the other broke). Since my PB is still under it's 1 yr warranty, I called up Apple Customer Service (I hate calling any CS...) and I opted to just take it into the Apple store (which you can do). I didn't want to wait that long... (and why should we.. but that's another story). To make a long story short, took a 10 minute drive and spent 5 minutes waiting for the quick fix. The people at the Apple Store were so much better (mainly because you are a face and a customer, not a voice and a number) and very polite and good humored about the repair. No cost to me but a few moments of my time. It's probably a unique experience, but I personally count this as a big plus for the next time I buy a laptop (MacBook Pro v2...).
Two completely similar circumstances, two different results. I still stand beside my conviction that quality != customer service. Customer service is a b.s. moniker to fill the gap between selling something to a customer and making a customer come back. Quality will do this without a bunch of phone calls, and customer service should be an exception, not a rule.
Customer service is the most overused and useless metric in business. Frankly because everyone says it's the most important aspect. Newsflash: it's B.S.
Quality of product is the most important. Quality ( another overzealously used term used without regard to what it really means ) is extremely important. Quality craftsmanship, quality in design, quality in user experience, etc. Quality != customer service or higher cost. It also doesn't mean you make the best product possible, but you make YOUR product as well as you can possibly make it. You have to demand it of yourself.
Apple does NOT, in fact, make their own products (read the box, designed by Apple, made in China/Indonesia/Korea), but they do produce a certain amount of quality in design, and do strive to produce quality in craftsmanship (note the continued push for longer battery life, in-house redesign of the click wheel, brighter displays). Out-of-the-box, I believe a new user will have a good experience with a Mac and its OS and therefore the quality of user experience is good as well. Add these factors up, and you get a significant amount of quality product. Yes, there are constraints (iTunes has to comply with DRM, the RIAA, FCC, et al.), but you can still provide quality... you just have to know how. That, in reality, is what most manufacturers and designers just don't get: quality is a sum product of a lot of hard work ON THE PRODUCT ITSELF not the PRODUCTION OF A PRODUCT. People will buy quality products at a higher price, but only if they know it's going to a quality product. That's where sales/marketing and business collide. There IS a difference between market-speak and business-speak. I wish people would stop using such crappy crosstalk.
I remember the big flop-n-twitch fest Apple had over the successor to 7.5.5. What a fiasco they went through. Blue box, yellow box, Copeland, BeOS, what do we do!? Then they restructured, bought NeXT, got Steve Jobs, and reoriented themselves (which took them a long while to get back on an even keel). I know it's not the same situation, but it feels like a familiar flop-n-twitch fest that results from lack of focus and direction. Dream up new and exciting features, but rather than prioritizing what's most important early, just start slashing features until you end up with the same OS? That doesn't make sense. It looks to me that they are trying to get their heads wrapped around a project that's gone on a little too long in development and without strict oversight. I'm probably wrong, but it would be good to see them pull Vista out of a tailspin of bad news.
Ok, this bugs me. Critical definition (in this usage): being in or approaching a state of crisis. You can't be HIGHLY critical. It's either critical or it's not (unless you're subcritical, supercritical or prompt critical, but that's another critical). That's like saying it's really really really important when you know it's really really important already. Maybe it could be XTREMELY AWESOME CRITICAL GAPING MAW PREMIUM DELUXE 2006 instead. If you're going to butcher a perfectly decent language/grammar, go with the best: marketspeak.
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I agree with you, but I think the beginning of the equation starts with good quality and customer service should be for the those times that the product is defective or does happen to fail. An increase in quality should correlate to a reduction in RMA and customer service calls/complaints. CS should supplement, not supplant quality, but it seems to be pervading conception.
Funny thing you mention that. I had a similar problem happen with my 15" PB. My cat happened to walk across the keyboard and his claw popped out a couple of keys (one popped back in, but the other broke). Since my PB is still under it's 1 yr warranty, I called up Apple Customer Service (I hate calling any CS...) and I opted to just take it into the Apple store (which you can do). I didn't want to wait that long... (and why should we.. but that's another story). To make a long story short, took a 10 minute drive and spent 5 minutes waiting for the quick fix. The people at the Apple Store were so much better (mainly because you are a face and a customer, not a voice and a number) and very polite and good humored about the repair. No cost to me but a few moments of my time. It's probably a unique experience, but I personally count this as a big plus for the next time I buy a laptop (MacBook Pro v2...).
Two completely similar circumstances, two different results. I still stand beside my conviction that quality != customer service. Customer service is a b.s. moniker to fill the gap between selling something to a customer and making a customer come back. Quality will do this without a bunch of phone calls, and customer service should be an exception, not a rule.
Customer service is the most overused and useless metric in business. Frankly because everyone says it's the most important aspect. Newsflash: it's B.S.
Quality of product is the most important. Quality ( another overzealously used term used without regard to what it really means ) is extremely important. Quality craftsmanship, quality in design, quality in user experience, etc. Quality != customer service or higher cost. It also doesn't mean you make the best product possible, but you make YOUR product as well as you can possibly make it. You have to demand it of yourself.
Apple does NOT, in fact, make their own products (read the box, designed by Apple, made in China/Indonesia/Korea), but they do produce a certain amount of quality in design, and do strive to produce quality in craftsmanship (note the continued push for longer battery life, in-house redesign of the click wheel, brighter displays). Out-of-the-box, I believe a new user will have a good experience with a Mac and its OS and therefore the quality of user experience is good as well. Add these factors up, and you get a significant amount of quality product. Yes, there are constraints (iTunes has to comply with DRM, the RIAA, FCC, et al.), but you can still provide quality... you just have to know how. That, in reality, is what most manufacturers and designers just don't get: quality is a sum product of a lot of hard work ON THE PRODUCT ITSELF not the PRODUCTION OF A PRODUCT. People will buy quality products at a higher price, but only if they know it's going to a quality product. That's where sales/marketing and business collide. There IS a difference between market-speak and business-speak. I wish people would stop using such crappy crosstalk.
I remember the big flop-n-twitch fest Apple had over the successor to 7.5.5. What a fiasco they went through. Blue box, yellow box, Copeland, BeOS, what do we do!? Then they restructured, bought NeXT, got Steve Jobs, and reoriented themselves (which took them a long while to get back on an even keel). I know it's not the same situation, but it feels like a familiar flop-n-twitch fest that results from lack of focus and direction. Dream up new and exciting features, but rather than prioritizing what's most important early, just start slashing features until you end up with the same OS? That doesn't make sense. It looks to me that they are trying to get their heads wrapped around a project that's gone on a little too long in development and without strict oversight. I'm probably wrong, but it would be good to see them pull Vista out of a tailspin of bad news.
I'll raise your OBVIOUS +5 with a VORPALLY OBVIOUS +12 (Major Relic): Games are fun.
Ok, this bugs me. Critical definition (in this usage): being in or approaching a state of crisis. You can't be HIGHLY critical. It's either critical or it's not (unless you're subcritical, supercritical or prompt critical, but that's another critical). That's like saying it's really really really important when you know it's really really important already. Maybe it could be XTREMELY AWESOME CRITICAL GAPING MAW PREMIUM DELUXE 2006 instead. If you're going to butcher a perfectly decent language/grammar, go with the best: marketspeak.