‘Flailing’, Eh?

Mike Arrington, extrapolating from his own personal experience with some apparent lemon MacBooks:

They need to get their house in order or they risk alienating all these new customers they’ve added over the last few years. The new buyers aren’t Apple fanatics and won’t sit quietly as they try to access broken services via failing hardware.

Let’s see what the just-released 2008 American Customer Satisfaction Index says:

Apple Inc. trounced rival computer makers selling Windows-equipped PCs by historic margins in an annual customer satisfaction survey, the poll’s chief researcher said today.

“We haven’t seen anything like this before, where a company scores 10 points over its nearest rival,” said Claes Fornell, the head of the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), conducted quarterly by the University of Michigan.

Apple’s customer satisfaction score of 85, an ACSI record in the personal computer category, was 10 points higher than the closest competitor, Dell Inc.; 12 points higher than Hewlett-Packard Co.; and 13 higher than Gateway, which was acquired by Acer last year.

Is Apple perfect? No. Does it suck when you buy a new Mac that doesn’t work right? Yes. But is Apple doing a far better job than any of its competitors? Yes.

★ Tuesday, 19 August 2008