14 DAY TRIAL // A new study conducted by Vocal Laboratories Inc. (Vocalabs) reveals that Apple’s support satisfaction has dropped significantly in the past 18 months.
Vocal Laboratories’ National Customer Service Survey (NCSS) tracks customer service quality in different industries. The NCSS is underwritten and conducted independently by Vocalabs (without the help of the companies covered).
What they do is ring up a customer immediately after they ended the conversation with their vendor’s help desk.
After conducting these phone interviews with customers of the Cupertino, CA company, Vocalabls determined that Apple was still leader of the pack, ahead of Dell and HP, in customer service quality for phone-based technical support.
Some 54% of Apple customers were “Very Satisfied” with their support calls during the last six months of 2011.
Dell scored 44% and HP had 49% customers “very satisfied.”
“Apple’s satisfaction score is down 19 points from the first half of 2010, while Dell and HP have generally held steady over the past two years,” Vocalabs said.
Less than 1% of the surveyed Apple customers complained about the language skills of the support technician. In the Dell camp, 8% complained about this aspect. HP was even worse, at 10%.
Another area where Apple saw fewer complaints was the extra cost of out-of-warranty tech support - “About 1% of Apple customers volunteered a cost complaint in this study, as compared to 6% of Dell customers and 6% of HP customers,” said Vocalabs.
“Despite its significant decline, Apple continues to lead our survey in overall tech support quality,” said Peter Leppik, CEO of Vocalabs.
“But where Apple used to be well ahead in nearly every measure of service quality, there are now areas where Apple is tied with, or even behind, its competitors,” added Leppik.
Vocalabs suggests it won’t be long before Apple finally loses its crown.
Statistics in this study are based on 4,852 surveys completed between May 2008 and December 2011.