Consumer survey reveals decline in consumer satisfaction with Apple’s phone support

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, one of Apple’s cornerstones has always been phenomenal customer service. A report published by Vocalabs which takes a look at customer satisfaction with phone-based technical support shows some disconcerting trends from Apple’s camp.

While Apple still remains best in class with 54% of customers stating they were “very satisfied” with the call, only 18 months ago Apple was way ahead of the competition with a 73% satisfaction rate. In comparison, Dell trended up a little bit during the 18 months, but ultimately ended back up at the 44% it started at and HP went from 52% to 49% in the same time period.  If this trend continues, Apple could very well find itself only on par with its competition in an area that it once excelled.

When examining the automated portion of the call, Apple trails both HP and Dell in customer satisfaction. Over the last 2 years, Apple’s satisfaction rate has decreased from 52% to 30%, while both Dell and HP have experienced growths to 40% and 46% respectively.

It’s not all bad for the Cupertino giant. Apple is still the leader when it comes to the language skills of its agents and the costs associated with extra tech support. In 2011, only 0.95% of Apple customers complained about the language skills of the agent, whereas 10.2% of HP’s customers were dissatisfied with the language skills of HP agents. As far as extra costs, Apple also had the fewest complaints with 1.49%, while Dell experienced a 6.20% complaint rate about extra tech support costs. As Vocalabs points out, these companies have varying degrees of enforcement when it comes to out-of-warranty support, so Apple may be more apt to try and resolve simple out-of-warranty issues before asking for additional payment.

What do you think? If you’ve called Apple for iPhone or iPad support, do you feel your experience was consistent with these findings?

source: Vocalabs via Apple Insider