Apple no longer sits at the cool kids’ table. It runs the table.
The company recently reported quarterly revenue of $91.8 billion, an increase of 9 percent from the year-ago quarter and an all-time record, and quarterly earnings per diluted share of $4.99, up 19 percent, also an all-time record. Apple continues to make fools of analysts who’ve questioned the company’s relevance, especially amid a slump in iPhone sales. Well, guess what: iPhone sales are doing just fine after all. And so is Apple’s stock price year over year:
Siri, once the weak sister among smart voice assistants, has the world’s largest market share, even more than Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and Microsoft Cortana. Turns out the never-say-die iPhone and the release of AirPods Pro have helped propel Siri to a wider base of users.
What do all the above statistics tell you? Apple is defining its market as well as it always has, just in different ways that are perhaps not as earth shattering as the launch of the iPhone in 2007. (Let’s face it: the iPhone was like Van Gogh’s “Starry night over the Rhone” – a masterpiece and highwater mark that is seldom if ever matched again). For example:
Apple saw the rise of wellness care coming and positioned the Apple Watch not as a cool wearable but as a healthcare device. As CNBC reported, “Apple’s wearable category which includes the Apple Watch and AirPods wireless headphones, has been growing strongly. In the December quarter, that division brought in over $10 billion in net sales, a near 27% year-on-year increase.” In a newly published Hacker Noon article, I dig into the reasons why the Apple Watch has flourished in context of Apple’s strategy to be the data backbone of healthcare.
Apple saw a growth opportunity in services (as opposed to hardware sales). Its Services division reported an all-time high in revenue growth for the most recent quarter, $12.7 billion versus $10.8 billion year over year. For its fiscal year 2019 (ended September 28, 2019), Apple reported $46.3 billion in Services, a 16 percent year-over-year increase.
Apple got out in front of the rise of the voice-first world and introduced Siri in 2011, beating Amazon Alexa to the market by three years. (But Amazon completely outflanked everyone, including Apple, in the smart speaker market with the launch of the Amazon Echo in 2015.)
What’s next for Apple? Becoming a credible player in the streaming wars. Apple TV+, launched in November 2019, has a long, long way to go. Apple TV+ is being met with the same derision that Apple Music once faced. And whereas Apple Music could play catch-up by developing an formidable library of someone else’s music, Apple TV+ needs to develop original content to compete with Amazon, Prime Video, Disney+, and Netflix.
But don’t ever underestimate Apple. The company has a huge reservoir of cash, and it’s willing to dip into it an example being the recent hiring of Former HBO CEO Richard Plepler to run Apple TV+.
Disney+ has The Mandalorian. Netflix has Stranger Things. What does Apple TV+ have to capture our imaginations and light the internet on fire?
Well, nothing approaching Stranger Things or The Mandalorian-level ofwidespread excitement. But the Apple TV+ show Dickinson is quickly building momentum and delivering what Apple TV+ needs: cultural relevance.
Why Cultural Relevance Matters
Cultural relevance is essential for any entertainment company to succeed in the long run. Brands become culturally relevant when they connect with an audience through their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. Sometimes cultural relevance means shaping attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors, too. When brands achieve cultural relevance, they become so inextricably linked with our lives that we become lifelong members of their tribes.
Disney Masters Cultural Relevance
Disney is the master of cultural relevance. Mickey Mouse is more than a popular animated character. Mickey Mouse is an international symbol of childhood. Frozen is a pop culture phenomenon. The Lion King introduced the words “Hakuna Matata” to millions of people. The Little Mermaid inspired cosplayers for generations to come. And now, Disney+ is having a culturally relevant moment with The Mandalorian.
Almost immediately, The Mandalorian sparked passionate conversations on social media about Baby Yoda, Boba Fett, and Star Wars lore. I’ve not seen social media explode with such ferocity over a pop culture phenomenon since Pokémon GO hit. The Mandalorian did something else: it became the most in-demand original streaming TV show in the United States, unseating Netflix’s Stranger Things. Is it any surprise that Disney+ achieved more than 10 million subscribers on launch day? And all this excitement hit in time to unleash related merchandise for the holiday shopping season.
This is what culturally relevant shows do. They inspire conversation that transcends the show itself. Among the streaming companies, Netflix has created the gold standard for cultural relevance (although Disney may catch up and then some). Stranger Things has become a pop culture sensation by tapping into 1980s nostalgia (and arguably engineering that nostalgia). Tidying up with Marie Kondo connects with an American materialism (and its consequences) so profoundly that the show actually created a spike in donations to thrift stores. This is the entertainment company that changed how we watched TV and is responsible for vernacular such as “Netflix and chill.”
Along Comes Apple TV+
Now, what about Apple TV+, which launched on November 4? Well, the results are mixed, and Apple TV+ has been outflanked by The Mandalorian. The much hyped The Morning Show has failed to catch fire. Apple has delayed the release of theatrical film The Banker amid allegations of misconduct against one of the movie’s producers. But on the other hand, a lesser known series, Dickinson, has been steadily building a fan base.
On the surface, Dickinson focuses on the life of poet Emily Dickinson. But what makes Dickinson culturally relevant is that it’s more than the story of a poet. It’s a perfectly timed statement about female and LGBTQ+ empowerment. In addition, the casting is smart. For instance, Hailee Steinfeld, who portrays Emily Dickinson, connects effectively with Gen Z and the LGBTQ+ community. Wiz Khalifa, who portrays a personification of death, is highly relevant to music, fashion, and weed culture. And the show’s soundtrack, featuring artists ranging from A$AP Rocky to Billie Eilish, is a Millennial’s dream. As such, Dickinson is rapidly creating a fan base who call themselves “Dickheads,” and the show has inspired the term “Sexy Dickinson.” Now this is what cultural relevance looks like:
Dickinson has already been renewed for another season.
Keep an Eye on Apple TV+
Creating cultural relevance requires an insight into consumer behavior, the agility to rapidly create content that taps into this behavior, and a platform to share that content at scale. Apple has the platform for Apple TV+ through Apple TV (and a new Apple TV app). As a media brand, Apple is getting better at tapping into consumer behavior and creating the right content. We all remember how Apple stumbled badly with its ill-fated forced download of U2’s Songs of Innocence album in 2014 – a miscalculation of consumer behavior (streaming was overtaking downloading, and people resented being forced to download music they did not ask for) and taste (U2 was out of fashion). But since then, Apple has adapted by launching a streaming service that now dominates the industry along with Spotify.
Apple played catch-up and then became a leader in music streaming by becoming more culturally relevant with content that connects to millennial tastes, such as the Up Next program for developing artists and first-look album drops by artists such as Chance the Rapper and Drake. Original content alone was not the answer to the rise of Apple Music – culturally relevant content that connects emotionally was.
Apple TV+ has a long way to go before it attains cultural relevance. But Dickinson is a clear win. In addition, Apple has plenty of cash – and a lot of patience. You can be sure Apple is figuring out how to create its next Dickinson.
Apple took a major step forward to influence the future of healthcare with the release of an ECG app and irregular heart rhythm notification. With the Apple Watch Series 4, users can take an ECG similar to a single-lead reading. And owners of Apple Watch Series 1 or later (with watch OS 5.1.2) can get notified if an irregular heart rhythm such as atrial fibrillation (AFib) is identified (per the American Heart Association, AFib is present in about one in five strokes.) The new functionality has already been credited with saving one man’s life. The release of the app also comes with a challenge: earning credibility with physicians, who have voiced concerns about people misreading the app’s data. But Apple is up for the challenge — and will succeed. That’s because for years, Apple has built partnerships across the healthcare ecosystem. Those partnerships have provided a proving ground for Apple’s healthcare apps and generated a reservoir of goodwill for one of the world’s most valuable brands.
A Healthcare Strategy
The ECG app, announced at Apple’s September 12 Special Event, support Apple’s strategy to improve healthcare by being the data backbone for patient care. That strategy has three key elements:
Software for patients and providers to monitor and share data, which is where apps come into play.
Hardware: the Apple Watch and iPhone to create an ever-present device platform.
Relationships with healthcare providers such as hospital networks to monitor and share wellness data.
Apple’s penetration of healthcare supports its growth in both wearables and services, two categories that, while small, are contributing more to Apple’s revenue growth based on its fourth-quarter earnings results announced November 1. But with healthcare, CEO Tim Cook has loftier aspirations than generating more revenue. As he told TIME recently, “Apple’s largest contribution to mankind will be in improving people’s health and well-being.”
But to improve health and well-being, Apple needs to have physicians on board. Some have been publicly critical of the ECG app, while others have been supportive. The announcement of heart monitoring features during Apple’s September Special Event almost immediately triggered concerns from physicians who worried that patients would misdiagnose themselves. But the announcement also came with support from the medical community. For example, Christopher Worsham, a critical care physician at Massachusetts General Hospital, and Anupam B. Jena, an internist at Massachusetts General Hospital, wrote in Harvard Business Review, “ . . . doctors shouldn’t be too quick to dismiss the new feature, particularly as it appears amidst growing consumer enthusiasm for wearable devices that measure health behaviors. The Apple Watch has the potential to provide valuable data that benefits the entire health care community.”
Now that the ECG app is live, Apple has experienced both criticism and good PR. On the one hand, an Orange Country cardiologist, Dr. Brian Kolski, has complained about numerous patients contacting him because they thought their Apple Watches were reporting heart problems when in fact nothing was wrong. Dr. Kolski discussed a patient who contacted him in the middle of the night, panicking about a heart reading he’d seen on his Apple Watch.
“He texted me the strip, and it was completely normal,” Dr. Kolski told The Orange County Register. “This was a healthy 45-year-old man who was playing around on his watch and went into a major panic.”
On the other hand, the new features are generating positive news coverage for Apple. TechCrunch and ABC News have already reported the case of Ed Dentel, whose physician told him that the new app likely saved his life by notifying him of an abnormal heart rate. Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN’s chief medical correspondent, tested the ECG app and reported it to be “remarkably easy” although he cautioned users to use the app with care.
“The app may also increase visits to the doctor from newly concerned patients,” he wrote. “Still, there has been considerable enthusiasm from the medical community as a whole . . . There is no doubt Apple is counting on doctors to use the data collected by the Apple Watch. The company has made it easy to upload your ECG, along with a description of your symptoms, to your personal doctor directly from the app to facilitate that communication. It’s all part of their big bet on making an impact in health care.”
Strong Relationships in Place
The PR is important, and so is the data that Apple cranks out to substantiate the value and accuracy of the ECG app. But Apple already has something else going for it: a demonstrated ability to forge partnerships with the medical community. The launch of the ECG app is just the latest in a long list of Apple’s accomplishments on the road to become a healthcare player — and those successes have come through partnerships with physicians that I discussed in my recent white paper, Dr. Apple Will See You Now. For example:
In 2014 Apple, launched HealthKit to give Apple users a central repository to track health and fitness data on their Apple devices. In February 2015, Ochsner Health System in New Orleans launched its “Hypertension Digital Medicine Program,” which relies on HealthKit to help patients measure and share with the provider their own blood pressure and heart rates. Oschner adjusts (in real-time, if needed) patients’ medications and lifestyle counseling based on the findings.
In 2015, Apple released ResearchKit, an open source software framework designed for medical and health research, intended to help doctors and scientists gather data more frequently and more accurately from participants using iPhone apps. The University of Rochester has used ResearchKit to build an app for the largest Parkinson’s study in history. According to Apple, “the app helps researchers better understand Parkinson’s disease by using the gyroscope and other iPhone features to measure dexterity, balance, gait, and memory.”
In January 2018, Apple announced that its Health app will make it possible for users to see their medical records right on their iPhones, which would thus empower potentially 90 million Americans who own iPhones. When Apple launched the capability, the company came out of the gate with 39 hospital networks participating. (Apple keeps a running list of participating hospital networks on its website.)
Apple has published more examples of successful physician collaboration. For instance, at Johns Hopkins, physicians provide epilepsy patients with Apple Watches to track their seizures, possible triggers, medications, and side effects. Thanks to a special app developed by Johns Hopkins, the EpiWatch, patients have access to their personal information through a dashboard that also shares data with providers if the patient wants to do so. Patients can also send a message to family members and providers to let them know when the patient is tracking a seizure. Johns Hopkins is collecting this data to eventually understand how to predict seizures before they happen.
Hiring Physicians
Reportedly, Apple’s journey to healthcare prominence also means hiring approximately 50 physicians. CNBC cited the example of hiring hired an orthopedic surgeon, Sharat Kusuma, who leads a team working with medical device maker Zimmer Biomet “to study whether Apple technology can help patients recover from knee and hip replacement surgeries.” In a December 12 article, Christina Farr of CNBC wrote, “The hires could help Apple win over doctors — potentially its harshest critics — as it seeks to develop and integrate health technologies into the Apple Watch, iPad and iPhone.” She added,
Doctors can also help Apple guide the medical community on how to use Apple’s new health technologies and to deflect criticism. As an example, when Apple announced its electrocardiogram sensor to track heart rhythm irregularities, the company put up a website to help answer physicians’ questions. That’s important because there’s a very high bar to win approval among doctors who fear liability and are already overburdened by technology.
And here is where Apple’s established relationships with medical networks will pay off. Apple is not trying to build relationships and credibility from scratch. Apple already possesses goodwill by proving itself through efforts that precede the ECG app (such as those cited above). And Apple’s other ace in the hole is usage among physicians: 75 percent of doctors in the United States own some form of Apple device, according to a study by Manhattan Research.
We all know Steve Jobs was the super power who made Apple synonymous with changing the world. But Tim Cook is building a legacy, too, around healthcare. That’s because Apple is improving healthcare through partnerships, not disruption.
At Apple’s September 12 Special Event, the company continued to show off its growing healthcare superpowers with the release of the Apple Watch Series 4. The latest iteration of the Apple Watch, available September 21, unleashes new features designed to help people manage wellness. Those features include:
Creation of an ECG similar to a single-lead electrocardiogram. Using a new ECG app, watch owners can take an ECG reading from their wrists and receive heart rhythm classifications. The Apple Watch can classify if the heart is beating in a normal pattern or whether there are signs of Atrial Fibrillation (AFib). In addition, the data is stored in Apple’s Health app in a PDF that can be shared with physicians. In Apple’s words, “It’s a momentous achievement for a wearable device that can provide critical real-time data for doctors and peace of mind for you.”
The ability to detect when a person falls and report a falling incident to a designated emergency contact. Analyzing wrist trajectory and impact acceleration, the Apple Watch sends the user an alert after a fall, which can be dismissed or used to initiate a call to emergency services. If the Apple Watch senses immobility for 60 seconds after the notification, it will automatically call emergency services and send a message along with location to emergency contacts.
More fitness features. The Apple Watch already gamifies healthcare by rewarding users with special badges for completing fitness tasks such as walking. Now the Apple Watch allows users to challenge other Apple Watch wearers to complete fitness tasks. In addition, the device provides other features such as prompting owners to start workouts and accurately tracking active calories burned for activities such as hiking and yoga.
With the Apple Watch Series 4, Apple extends its reach into healthcare, following a strategy that the company has been pursuing for years.
Apple and Mary Meeker agree: we’re living in an increasingly voice-first world. But how well is Apple adapting?
On May 30, Kleiner Perkins venture capitalist Mary Meeker, one of the most influential pundits in digital, released her annual Internet Trends report. The uptake of voice-based digital interfaces was a significant theme. She identified voice as one of nine areas where innovation and growth are occurring as U.S. internet usage continues to growth.
“With voice, we’ve hit technology liftoff with word accuracy and we’ve certainly hit product liftoff with Amazon Echo’s install base estimated to be around 30 million plus,” she said, as she presented her report at the 2018 Code Conference. And she presented slides to illustrate her point.
It’s worth noting that in her 2016 report, she quoted Andrew NG, chief scientist at Baidu, who said, “As speech recognition accuracy goes from say 95% to 99%, all of us in the room will go from barely using it today to using it all the time. Most people underestimate the difference between 95% and 99% accuracy – 99% is a game changer . . . “
According to Meeker’s 2018 report, we’ve now approaching that point where accuracy rates will trigger widespread adoption.
As Meeker noted, sales of the Amazon Echo have been phenomenal – an example of a technology company identifying a need that people did not know they had. And the Echo is an important, but not the only, barometer of voice’s uptake. Businesses such as Amazon, Continue reading →
How easily can you obtain your medical records from your provider? Do you know what your precise cholesterol levels are? I’m willing to bet my new iPhone that your answers to these questions are “Impossible” and “No.”
But if Apple has its way, we’ll finally have always-available access to our own medical records – at least those of us who own iPhones will.
Announcing Health Records
On January 24, Apple announced that its Health app will make it possible for users to see their medical records right on their iPhones, which would thus empower potentially 90 million Americans who own iPhones. The capability became available for patients of 12 medical institutions January 25. Following a beta launch, Apple will expand the program for participating medical providers. Continue reading →
Apple continues to shape the future of healthcare.
At its September 12 special event, Apple CEO Tim Cook and COO Jeff Williams announced something less sexy than the $1,000 iPhone X but no less important: new health and fitness features through watchOS 4, the operating system that powers the Apple Watch. They include:
Improved heart monitoring. The Apple Watch already performs basic heart-monitoring with Cardiogram (In fact, according to Williams, the Apple Watch is the most-used heart rate monitor in the world.) But with watchOS 4 (available September 19), Apple Watch will also report resting heart rate and recovery heart rate (the latter metric tells you how quickly your heart rate drops after a workout). As Williams said, a lower resting heart rate and a quicker recovery rate can be signs of improved fitness.
Alerts on elevated resting heart rates. Williams noted that many Apple customers wrote to Apple about how their Apple Watches helped them detect unusually high heart rates at unexpected times. So the Apple Watch now notifies owners when the device detects an elevated heart rate and the owner does not appear to be active — thus alerting the watch owner about potential heart problems.
Better support for your workout. For example through the GymKit technology platform, watch OS 4 will make it possible for people to sync fitness data between their Apple Watches and cardio machines they use at the gym, thus delivering more accurate fitness information such as calories burned or distance traveled during your workout. The sync feature will only work with newer pieces of gym equipment — so that functionality might be limited.
Apple also announced that the company is working with Stanford Medical Center to determine whether the Apple Watch can accurately detect abnormal heart rhythms, or arrhythmias. As noted by Jessica Conditt of Engadget, Apple would like for the Apple Watch to be able to detect common – but often undiagnosed — heart conditions such as atrial fibrillation. According to a study done by Cardiogram and the University of California, San Francisco, the Apple Watch already detects the most common type of heart arrhythmia with a 97 percent accuracy rate. With the Apple Heart Study, Apple will manage its own research with Stanford Medical Center.
“In our Initial studies, Apple Watch has been effective at surfacing irregular rhythms,” Williams said. He noted that the Apple Heart Study “will use data from Apple Watch and Continue reading →
Apple’s newly announced HomePod smart speaker is more than Apple’s answer to Amazon Echo and Google Home in the battle for your home – it’s quite possibly Apple’s major advantage in the music streaming wars.
In unveiling the HomePod June 5 at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), Apple announced that the voice-activated speaker will be a music-first experience that combines both the quality of high-fidelity Sonos speaker and the intelligent interface of the Amazon Echo – with a focus on providing users access to the Apple Music catalog. As Apple noted in a press release,
Designed to work with an Apple Music subscription for access to over 40 million songs, HomePod provides deep knowledge of personal music preferences and tastes and helps users discover new music.
At WWDC, Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook said the speaker has “amazing sound and incredible intelligence that will reinvent home music.”
Why the focus on a high-fidelity experience with an emphasis on music? One reason is that Apple wants to be the leading music streaming provider – badly. After disrupting the music industry through iTunes and the iPod, Apple found itself looking behind the times when consumer tastes shifted from downloading songs on iTunes to streaming them on apps such as Spotify. And looking outdated is strange ground for Apple. Apple’s desire to play catch up with streaming was a big reason why the company paid $3 billion for Beats in 2014. Months after buying Beats, Apple launched its own service, Apple Music, in 2015.
The good news for Apple is that within two years, Apple Music has become the Number Two streaming service as measured by paid subscribers. And these are heady times for streaming services such as Apple Music and Spotify. In 2016, for the first time ever, streaming music platforms generated the majority of the U.S. music industry’s revenues. As the RIAA noted, the biggest contributor to growth was a doubling of revenues from paid streaming services. But for Apple, there is also some bad news:
Amazon has been rapidly encroaching upon music streaming. It offers a limited service to Amazon Prime customers (Amazon Prime Music) and recently launched a subscription service, Amazon Music Unlimited.
Spotify and Amazon are significant competitors with their own strengths and weaknesses:
Spotify enjoys the strong brand affiliation with music, its customer base, and outstanding personalized playlists, but the company is losing money.
Amazon enjoys an advantage with its deep pockets and the popularity of Echo speaker, which provide a natural platform for streaming music. But Amazon Music Unlimited is an upstart (and Amazon Prime Music is a feature of Amazon Prime, not a pure streaming service, per se).
And in addition, Echo is also a platform for playing music through voice commands (“Play the new Lorde song”), something Spotify does not offer. In 2017, according to eMarketer, 35.6 million Americans will use a voice-activated assistant device at least once a month, and 71 percent of them will use Echo. (Google Home has the second highest marketshare behind Echo, at 24 percent, but Google does not release user figures for its Google Play streaming service.)
No wonder Amazon offers Amazon Music Unlimited at its lowest price to owners of Amazon Echo speakers: Echo is a Trojan Horse for Amazon’s music streaming product.
But Swiss Army knives, while being useful, are not great at everything. The Echo is not engineered specifically to listen to music. HomePod is. At WWDC, Apple Senior Vice President of Global Marketing Phil Schiller said that HomePod will provide the high quality of a Sonos speakers and the smart interface of the Echo.
“These aren’t smart speakers, Schiller said of Sonos. “They don’t sound so great when you listen to music,” he said of the Echo. But HomePod will sound great and act as a home musicologist, he said.
He indicated that the HomePod will make it possible for consumers to call up music using complex voice searches and then listen to music through a product that provides state-of-the-art sound including spatial awareness, which adjusts the audio depending on where you are sitting in the room.
But the ace in the hole is the integration with Apple Music. As Apple announced,
By saying, “Hey Siri, I like this song,” HomePod and Apple Music become the perfect musicologist, learning preferences from hundreds of genres and moods, across tens of thousands of playlists, and these music tastes are shared across devices. Siri can also handle advanced searches within the music library, so users can ask questions like “Hey Siri, who’s the drummer in this?” or create a shared Up Next queue with everyone in the home. HomePod, Apple Music and Siri deliver the best music experience in the home that streams ad-free directly to HomePod.
HomePod will also provide the same functionality as Echo, providing functions ranging from turning on the lights in your home to providing sports and weather information.
Subscribing to Apple Music because it’s so easy to listen to music with voice commands on HomePod. (I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple offers an incentive for bundling Apple Music paid subscriptions and HomePod.)
It’s an interesting bet. Consumers have been indifferent to sound quality on mobile devices, not caring enough about sound quality to buy high-end mobile streaming products such as Pono. Meanwhile in the home environment, the growth and popularity of Sonos speakers for years showed that people would pay for premium sound – but then Amazon’s encroachment on Sonos suggest that consumers were willing to sacrifice the fidelity of Sonos for the convenience of Echo. And now Apple believes consumers will do the same with HomePod.
Apple won’t put a dent in Echo’s 71-percent market share anytime soon, but Apple doesn’t need to. Apple is not offering a utility that competes on price as Echo does. Apple is selling a high-end experience first and utility second. Apple Music is central to that experience. Will HomePod be a catalyst for Apple Music to eat into Spotify’s lead?
Consumers often associate a brand with its sensory elements – what we can see and touch. The sensory aspects create emotional connections that form the building blocks of a brand. But a successful brand requires many moving parts to operate in sync, and not all of them are obvious to the customer. My recent experience with Apple illustrates the point.
I live in a house of Apple fans. My wife, daughter, and I all own Apple products because they are user friendly and well designed. We’re also Apple stock holders. But even one of the world’s most valuable brands commits its share of misfires. In 2013, I bought a MacBook Pro that turned out to be a lemon. The unit suffered one malady after another, ranging from a broken track pad to frequent hard drive crashes. Each time I took the unit to the store for repair, the Apple service technicians were responsive and skillful, but the moment they fixed one problem, another would appear like an annoying mole in a Whack-A-Mole game.
Days ago, after the laptop experienced a meltdown, I visited the Apple store in Oakbrook, Illinois, and asked to speak to the manager. I explained that the MacBook was plagued with problems but that I wasn’t quite ready to buy a new one. Was there any kind of accommodation Apple could make even though the MacBook’s warranty had expired?
As it turned out, she could make an accommodation, and she did. After consulting the laptop’s extensive repair record, she replaced it with a new MacBook Pro at no cost. The moment the technician brought out the sealed box containing a silver laptop, my heart sang. When we unboxed the unit, I was so excited I snapped a photo for my Snapchat followers. The technician helped me get everything set up in the store. Problem solved! I went home a happy customer with my faith in Apple products restored.
The emotional appeal of opening up new laptop, feeling the smooth surface, and getting used to the touch of the new keyboard was a sensory experience and a victory for the Apple brand. And yet, many moving parts needed to work in sync for that moment to happen, some that were visible to me, and some that were not. Let’s break it down:
The manager possessed customer empathy. She listened to my problem and apologized for my bad experience. Her empathetic manner set the right tone. Behind the scenes, someone in Apple HR whom I may never meet made a smart hire.
As empathetic as she was, the manager also needed a way to verify my complaint. Sometimes customer unhappiness results from user error or negligence. Fortunately Apple’s technicians have a policy of meticulously recording every service issue behind the scenes. The store manager was able to see for herself the machine’s trouble-ridden service history.
The manager was empowered to replace my laptop at no charge. She did not have to spend the evening checking corporate policies and getting permission. As a result, I didn’t have to wait for hours or days to learn the final verdict. And she was not the first Apple employee I’ve met who has the authority to make judgment calls on the spot. Her ability to do so is a reflection of Apple’s culture.
The replacement product needed to be in stock for the magical moment to happen right then and there – which requires effective logistics management behind the scenes. If you’ve ever heard the “Sorry, the part is not in stock” line as you are on the cusp of making a purchase, you know what a letdown it is when you realize you’re in for a wait. For me, waiting for a resolution was unacceptable. I need my laptop to do my job as a writer and consultant. My laptop is my office.
As I noted, the packaging added to the experience – the equivalent of the attractive design of a new Shinola watch that creates an immediate emotional appeal.
The technician possessed empathy, too. He gave me a tour of the new MacBook, pointing out a few of its features that are different than my old one, and he helped me set up the new unit. In fact, all the Apple technicians I have worked with over the past few years have possessed tremendous empathy.
And many other important elements came into play that evening, which I almost take for granted, such as the ease of scheduling a repair appointment in Apple’s Genius Bar; the attractive, warm layout of the store; the comfortable furniture; and the spacious desks that make it possible for you to hang out while you’re waiting. Being able to comfortably sit and read or chat while you’re at the Genius Bar certainly softens the blow of having to get a repair done.
The layout of the Genius Bar also encourages collaboration between the technician and the customer. It feels like you’re sitting at your dining room table at home when you’re at the Genius Bar. There is no barrier between you and the Apple employee. No desks. No registers. The design creates an approachability that puts you at ease – a little detail that acts as a calming influence when you’re experiencing a service issue.
At the end of a long day, driving to the store to return a broken product is low on the list of things you want to do. But the inviting Apple store environment helps restore your spirits. At the same time, just to make the store welcoming, Apple needs to employ designers and retail specialists behind the scenes. Here again, unseen elements — the employees responsible for the store design and management of the Genius Bar — affect what I experience.
Finally, there is the variable over which Apple has no control: me, the customer. Ultimately the Apple brand comes down to my perceptions. And perception is reality. After getting my new laptop, I had a decision to make: how did I feel about what happened when I got a new laptop? Was I going to take the attitude of “Well, that’s the least they can do,” or was I going to be so happy that I’d blog about my experience? It has been said that your customer owns your brand, but businesses can pull many levers to influence a customer’s brand perception. Apple pulled all the right ones.
Now it’s up to Apple to reinforce trust through the reliable performance of my new laptop.
Doctors and dentists are not exactly renowned for managing the flow of information in their offices effectively. How many times have you been to a doctor’s or dentist’s office and gotten the sense that providers spend an inordinate amount of time checking in with administrative staff for patient records? A software provider named Simplifeye aims to make work flow in the medical office more efficient by storing information on wearables such as the Apple Watch.
By having patient information stored on the Apple Watch, providers always have instant access to patient records and thus an make themselves more efficient and cut out the downtime associated with waiting for administrative staff to deliver records.
As reported in TechCrunch, Simplifeye has obtained $3 million in funding. In addition, the good news for Simplifeye is good news for Apple. As I reported recently, Apple seeks to be the data backbone for patient care. Having its hardware and software integrated into companies such as Simplifeye helps Apple deliver on its strategy by strengthening the Apple data infrastructure in healthcare.
Simplifeye is set up to be an Apple shop, so to speak (one of its founders worked at Apple) although Simplifeye also offers a mobile app for providers who don’t want to use wearables.
Whether the Apple Watch has penetrated the consumer sector adequately is an open question. Apple officially does not report Apple Watch sales. But the signs are that the Apple Watch is making inroads in both the health provider and payer side (as witnessed by mass purchases of the Apple Watch by Aetna). And Simplifeye applies to dental care, too. As reported in Dentistry Today, “The Simplifeye app works in conjuction with the Apple Watch and allows dentists and staff to view the day’s schedule, know who’s in the waiting room, which operatories are ready for patients, and more. This system will allow you to flow patients through your office more quickly and efficiently, and your patients will be thrilled with the quick turnaround time.”
My recently published ebook, Dr. Apple Will See You Now, offers more insight into Apple’s direction in healthcare. Meanwhile, up-and-comers such as Simplifeye are helping Apple influence the future of healthcare.
