- Get to fill out some form or answer a few questions, so that in the future, they know whether I'm good at computers or not whenever I call. This way, people who don't know computers well and just want to get it working can get easy and detailed instructions, while experts can get technical details that will let us solve the problems ourselves, and/or get to talk to someone who has the same level of computer proficiency, and who won't feed us "reboot the computer" and "click the blue apple in the top left corner" kind of answers.

- Get to talk to the same person if I call again minutes, hours or days later on the same issue.

As a "maybe I'll swith user" and brainstorming a bit on this one, my biggest fear is being left to figure things out on my own. My suggestion:

- A "support now" link that instantly connects you via a chat box to someone who can answer questions. I've seen this on web sites for online ordering help. Would be great to have on my computer to help on those "easy" informative questions.

What about using iChat video to communicate with customer support workers. That way, you get a face-to-face experience, and you also get to use this nifty technology for something useful, which will make you feel good about having bought it in the first place.

In terms of online stuff, a mash up of an Apple blog and the knowledge base would be appreciated, along with hiring a few CSR's to patrol the Apple Discussion forums. Furthermore, allow me to submit a support request via email for things that are less urgent but I still need to get resolved.

Build some troubleshooting tech into OS X to run through the usual stuff, the crash dialogue that lets you reset preferences for an application that has crashed is a good start but isn't enough.

In terms of phone support/repairs:

Let me turn the horrific hold music off, and for the love of god, get rid of the "your call is important messages", if I'm on hold I'll be trying to do something else slightly less dull. Having a human voice play every so often means I think I've finally got a person only to realise my call is important enough to reaffirm how important it is, but not important enough to answer in a timely manner, leading to me ignoring human voices, only to have the outsourced drone who answers say hello about 8 times before I realise he/she is real.

The outsourced support personnel are useless with any kind of slightly complicated problem. I don't think I've ever had a problem resolved by one of them (I was once told to try MacFixIt.com by one of them). If I'm calling AppleCare it's because I've already tried everything I know as a Mac using geek to fix things, not because I haven't thought about restarting my computer. Joachim's idea is a good one, and is something I've thought about enough times myself while having someone with an indeterminate accent explain how to open the Finder.

When I get through to Ireland or America, my problem gets resolved 9 times out of 10 within a few minutes, by someone who doesn't treat me like an idiot, who I can actually hear (sort out the outsourced sound quality, please), and who might make a joke from time to time. If a problem I'm experiencing is a bug, for the love of god just tell me, file it, and email me when it's fixed.

I've used AppleCare before, our loft is filled with boxes stuffed with foam. For the love of all that is holy, give support personnel the ability to just send me a shipping label, not another box, just a sticker. You could even email it to me and avoid having to ship anything, surely either or both suggestions would save time, money, and give you another little bullet point to add to your environmental page. It would also be grand if you could sort out the messy approval process the outsourced CSR's have to go through to get a pickup, thus removing the 10 minutes of being on hold and waiting to speak to someone in Ireland to confirm the problem again that I'm used to experiencing.

Once my computer has been picked up (the person who decided on UPS deserves a medal), please let me track the status of the repair more closely and tell me more about what's going on. When my MacBook Pro was sent off, the status spent two weeks at "Diagnosing Product", calling for updates resulted in me being told that they'd requested an update but hadn't heard anything. Two weeks later, it moved to returned with no explanation as to why it had taken so long to fix the whine and other general Rev. A issues.

I'm relatively lucky in that I have a mac I can use while mine is being fixed, others are not so lucky. Tom Coates (http://www.plasticbag.org/archives/2006/10/the_unusual_flakiness/) actually ended up buying another MacBook Pro because he couldn't wait for his first one to be fixed. Many many people literally *cannot* be without their computer for longer than a couple of days because that's where all their work, not to mention a lot of their life, is.

Allow us to rate our repairs, it would be nice if I had somewhere I could note that my old iBook was sent in a while ago because it's HD had died (Disk Utility agreed with me), and rather than get replaced it, it came back formatted, worked for a couple more weeks, then died before having to be sent back again, and that my MacBook Pro came back from it's two week holiday with a couple of scratches on either side of the keyboard.

Either make AppleCare cheaper, or get it to include insurance against accidental damage/theft etc. I'm a student who bought his computer back before the HE national contract was re-negotiated, thus I couldn't get AppleCare for £50 or so like you can now. I hate that if I want support that lasts longer than a year, I have to pay the equivalent of about £10 a month for a couple of years to have my computer warranted against problems that might develop through no fault of my own.

Probably the single most frustrating thing to me is that after the initial 90-days of "Free AppleCare support" you have to pony up a credit card to even convince the tech you are talking to that it is a HARDWARE problem covered by a 1-year warranty!

To me it's really disengenuous to have a "1 year warranty" if you have to pay via credit card to get Apple to talk to you about how you can get it serviced. Yes, I realize that if it is deemed warranty, you are not charged, but in all this is a HORRIBLE way to treat your customers.

In all seriousness? Step one, before anything fancy? Every single person who is in any position to be in any step of the Apple support process should have a flawless understanding of English punctuation, grammar, spelling, and idiom.

Take a bunch of refurb machines and provide them as temporary replacements for people to use while their own machines are in the shop for warranty repair.

1) I agree with the 'geek card' comment - those of us who are techs need to have a different level of support than the average person. I've already gone through the support items and checked the various fixes - the only reason I'm contacting support is because it really is a true problem.

2) Make it easier to find the schedule time with a genius bar item on the apple website - having to find your local retail store first is lame. And this option should be available everywhere on the website and highlighted on the support section.

3) If I'm coming in for an issue I want to know everything that you're going to check in order for me to get the item fixed. Do you need my power adapter too? Do I have to bring in my computer for a peripheral? Are there any software or firmware updates I should try? Give me all the information possible before I go to the store - I HATE having to go into the store multiple times for the same issue.

Create "Ambassadors" a sort of roaming Genius that has an area to cover, a company car, a set of tools, basic supplies, and is contacted by AppleCare to go see and fix whatever is the problem. Basic stuff they fix right there, and if it's covered, great, if not, well then there is the bill to consider, but if this were done right, the people outside the metro areas of the US would be more able to dive into the Mac. It'd be a breeze, really.

Customers don't want honesty from you, they want things their way. As someone who worked in tech support for a long while, one thing I discovered is that the more lenient you are on your policies, the more people will abuse them to no end. Customer service computer industry wide is in the state it is, because customers will spill coffee in their computers and demand that it be covered under waranty. Customers will beat the hell out of their computer and want a free replacement. Customers will demand that their computer or DVD player or TV be serviced before everyone elses because they are very important and need it tomorrow, just like everyone else.

And the problem is, you can't be honest with them. You can't tell them that spilling coffee into a 3000 piece of equipment is stupid and it's even dumber to expect a free repair on it. You can't tell them that they can't have their TV fixed now because there are 100 people in line in front of them and they will just need to wait instead of being childish about having things done their way and right now.

And so draconian policies are born, and phone trees are made, and a call to customer service is 30 minutes on hold and being told that while yes it does appear there's something wrong with your computer, due to some circumstance you can't have it fixed under waranty right now and that's just too bad for you.

I realize it's not every customer that does this but so many do not understand how and why things are the way they are in customer service centers and will abuse every break you cut them.

If people would stop abusing the systems and stop seeeing themselves as the only and most important person around, customer service I think would be a lot better because you wouldn't need draconian policies to make everything fall into place.

And before anyone jumps down my throat. I've been that customer before. I know what it's like and I remember being extremely frustrated and hating it all, but working in tech support gives you a whole different perspective on things, and it's amazing how much of what doesn't make sense when you're holding a $1000 paperwieght makes much more sense when you're servicing said paperwieghts.

More prevalent use my Apple ID to consistently identify me for more personalised service (inside and outside of stores).

Customer support should actually support users and not computers. Users are associated with computer serial numbers. It should be the other way around.

1) Use my Apple ID to know _before_ a support conversation starts:
• how many computers I've purchased
• how many times I've called (about this issue and previous issues)
• how technically experienced I really am.
• when I last logged into the support site (so they know I tried the FAQ, and KB's before placing the call.)

2) If I log in on the apple support site it should say something like welcome back Joe Schmoe. Here are some things (updates, knowledge base articles, local happenings at your local apple store, pro-tips, new music on iTunes, etc.) you might want to know (because we know what you purchased, when you purchased it, and where you purchased it, and how much it cost).

I've worked in customer service and technical support. Still do. It's amazing how much more receptive people are when you know their name, their history and their situation. Even if you are new to them, it's a relief that they don't have to explain "from the beginning" repeatedly. Plus it seems professional and organised.

HINT: Might even make more sales on Applecare because it would seem less like an "extended warranty." and more like "The Bat Phone."...

Provide online tracking for service that actually says what's going on. You give your beloved laptop to the guy at the genius bar, and he says it will be back in 3-10 days. I accept that stuff is variable, I just want to know what's going on.

8 days passes, and you call the store to check on progress, and he puts you on hold to check on it via the internal secret web status info, and then tells me that "it's been logged in at the service center." All this means is that they didn't lose the package en route.

Oddly enough, later that same day I get a call saying that the laptop is back at the store and ready for pickup.

This has several effects. (1) It makes me suspect that the service tracking system just makes stuff up, or is wildly out of synch with what is really happening. (2) When I call and get vague answers, it makes me worry that something is wrong, and that worry becomes a negative suspicion about the quality of the work, the safety of the precious laptop, etc. (3) The customer gets antsy and unhappy for NO REASON which does a disservice to Apple's customer reputation.

When something occasionally goes horribly wrong with a service operation (and we all know that sometimes, stuff just happens), you want the customer to see it is a freakish aberration of nature that no one could have prevented, as opposed to yet another example of a slipshod operation that loses interest in me as a customer after liberating the initial purchase price from my wallet.

The simple act of letting me check on the status of my repair, and do so in semi-real-time with some level of detail would be great. At a minimum, I wish I could find out (a) that it has been received at the service center, (b) how many repairs are in the queue ahead of me, (c) an estimate based on the queue length of probable repair turnaround, (d) when it hits a technicians bench for actual work, and (e) when it hits the road to return to my home town.

Create a stolen powerbook/ipod/desktop registry. You (they) know my serial number from when my computer registered itself (I assume?), tied to my apple ID - so when it goes to do a software update once a week, why can't they check to see if it's been reported stolen, and then report the IP to the police? And maybe lock the machine down?

Can you tell this is a personal issue? Yep, my powerbook was stolen last week.

There's a reason they can't do the stolen laptop thing. Legal issues and customer privacy. Imagine for a moment that the stolen computer/ipod etc is auctioned or sold off (as they so often are). The person who bought it doesn't know it was stolen. Imagine that person was you. You're just looking to replace your laptop on the cheap, and you find a good deal. 4 days later, the police are knocking on your door accusing you have having stolen property (or even stealing it yourself). How would you feel? How would you feel when you found out the reason you're being interviewed and investigated by the police is because you logged into software updates? How would you feel if the machine you just bought to offset your stolen computer shuts down when you do a software update and won't turn back on and when you go to the store to get it repaired, they tell you "no can do" because the machine is flagged as stolen?

"You're just looking to replace your laptop on the cheap, and you find a good deal."

Where exactly did you find this deal? On a street corner? If you buy from a legitimate business, you can show the police the paperwork, which will get you off the hook legally, and you can get a refund of your money from the business.

"There's a reason they can't do the stolen laptop thing. Legal issues and customer privacy. ...You're just looking to replace your laptop on the cheap, and you find a good deal....How would you feel?"

I'd feel as if I'd just bought stolen property! That's like saying, you got a great deal on a used car, and the police pull you over and tell you it's stolen - so the DMV shouldn't keep track of stolen cars.

Please, "unnamed", think of a better argumennt than "it's okay to buy stolen property so don't hurt our feelings".

// 1) Use my Apple ID to know _before_ a support conversation starts:
• how many computers I've purchased
• how many times I've called (about this issue and previous issues)
• how technically experienced I really am.
• when I last logged into the support site (so they know I tried the FAQ, and KB's before placing the call.) //
Exactly. I've been using Macs for 20+ years. It would be great if when I contact Apple they knew something about my history with them, like what computers I've owned and my service history. How cool would it be to call Apple and have the guy say, "so, you still got that 512k?"

I think Apple needs an alternative to its highly vaunted "Genius Bar." I bought my first Apple earlier this year, and I was stunned at how inconvenient Apple service is to people who have typical 9 to 5 jobs. The Apple Store in Houston--one of the traffic nightmares of the USA--is located in one of our busiest areas. I need to be able to take my computer to the stores at off times and drop the damned thing off, just the way I do with my car or my old PC. It's not feasible for me to make appointments for the convenience of the geniuses, especially not the mandatory day-of appointments. Also, my iMac fell apart--I mean everything failed--within the first few months. Instead of just sending me a box and letting me send it back, I had to cart the machine back to the store several times while each piece got fixed separately. Only when yet another thing failed and I had written Steve Jobs a letter did I finally get the lemon replaced. I think the bottom line is if Apple is as proud of its product as it says it is, it should stand by its product. The fact is the PC manufacturers I've dealt with in the past have been much more willing to accept responsibility for their machines' flaws.

I have had some serious problems with the client-server configuration. I have an G5 XServe and iBooks and PowerBooks as clients, but I have had a load of problems getting the authentication and authority to work smoothly. It is still not problem free. I find the documentation of the XServe to be anything but satisfying. It would help, I think, to have access to set-up examples; concrete, down to earth examples, step by step instructions.

My first comment to "Time to innovate" didn't appear. Are you moderating? If not, here's my second, which has also not appeared after posting ...

"Wouldn't it be nice if Apple Concierge was something like an actual concierge? Apple could be unique in "pushing" out service, rather than customers having to "pull" it ...

I'd like to be able to open a service ticket (via phone, web or at my local Apple store) and then see Apple "push" out the service from a small dedicated/overlapping team of resolution managers allocated to my AppleID -- whose bonuses will depend on how quickly they solve problems and how highly we rate them afterwards.

Pulling service from Apple, as with many other companies, is slow, time consuming, frustrating and lacks continuity -- you often end up repeating a similar story to different people over several calls.

Naturally they should keep my hardware purchases and service history on file so they can approach me with some appropriate knowledge regarding my tech savvy, purchasing power, installations and past problems.

"Sources report a number of enterprise customers have expressed displeasure over Apple's planning that will have left them without a means to purchase servers for nearly an entire quarter. While Apple has made significant strides to cater to enterprise customers in the last few years, the company's handling of the Xserve situation is just one example of how enterprise continues to be a second-level priority for Apple, insiders say." (http://notes.thinksecret.com/secretnotes/0610xservenote.shtml)


How true is this? How can Apple claim to care about its customers when they get treated like this?

As far as I can make out, the most important thing in customer support is possibility to get necessary advice in good time. Thus, the first one you should do is to set connection with your customers. Also you need competent specialists who could answer any question. That's all.

Not all answers are created equal either. Answers based on revealed knowledge that can only be confirmed through the source of the revealed knowledge cannot be questioned in any useful way.

If you want customer support to work you have to pay more attention on the people that are talking directly with them They have to be very well prepared.

These political campagnes cost huge amounts of money for commercial and TV time…

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