Is there a bruise on Apple's reputation?

updated 7:46 p.m. ET Oct. 12, 2007

For Apple, there may be a downside to success. Sales of the Cupertino, Calif.-company's Macintosh machines are growing three times as fast as the overall PC market. Its iPod music player is burying the competition. And the stylish iPhone is setting the wireless industry on its head. But as Apple pulls in millions more customers with different kinds of products, it's getting harder to keep them all happy.

By broadening its share of the computer market and diving into whole new businesses, the company has become a case study in the challenges of taking a cherished brand with a devoted (some would say cult) following into the mainstream. "The customer base is now more diverse, including students and mainstream consumers, and it's harder to satisfy as a whole," says Lopo L. Rego, a marketing professor at the University of Iowa who studies the impact of customer satisfaction on financial performance.

Apple still tops all of the big measures of computer-customer service. But there are signs that it is vulnerable to the service struggles of other big companies. A widely watched study of customer satisfaction, released in August by the University of Michigan, showed Apple slipping 4 points from last year's score, to 79 on a 100-point scale. That still leads the industry, but it's the company's first decline since 2001.

Heated complaints
Meanwhile, the vitriol of complaints on some Apple-related blogs and Web sites, such as macintouch.com and tuaw.com (The Unofficial Apple Weblog), is approaching that usually reserved for cable TV. Commentary gets especially heated around such issues as iPhone pricing and restrictions, but ranges across all Apple products. An August posting on BusinessWeek's Byte of the Apple blog from a self-described "huge fan" read: "I, personally, will NEVER purchase an Apple computer EVER again, specifically BECAUSE of their support," which the writer claimed had been sullied by unhelpful store employees and call-center reps.

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Such anecdotal tales of woe may be more strident because of the hype surrounding Apple's recent product launches. And it's all but impossible to weigh them against complaints leveled at rivals. The company, for its part, cites an array of internal metrics in claiming service has never been better; wait times at its 185 Apple stores and on its phone support lines are holding steady, for instance. Chief Operating Officer Timothy D. Cook says Apple's customer satisfaction surveys show a rise of two to three percentage points from a year ago. "We've invested enough to be No. 1, in some cases by a large margin," says Cook. "And we're seeing a rise, so that makes us feel good."

Even small cracks in a pristine reputation, though, can be a sign of larger problems. Just ask Dell. Many shoppers complained bitterly about its service for years before the PC maker began losing market share in the fall of 2006. And any problems are more noticeable for Apple because high-quality service has always been part of its mystique. Its stores each have a service desk (the "Genius Bar") that offers free face-to-face help on everything from how to transfer music to the iPod to tweaking a Mac's hard drive. Customers can walk in or schedule appointments up to 48 hours in advance.

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