I Had A Great Customer Service Experience Today

We’ve all been there: you sign-up for a subscription based service or a free trial and you decide for whatever the reason not to renew the subscription at the end of the billing period.  Often times you’ll receive several emails reminding you that your subscription is about to expire and that you should renew and occasionally once it has expired, you may even receive a special “we want you back” offer.  But sometimes, depending upon the service, you receive something else (or in addition to emails), you receive a phone call from the company.  A phone call you typically try to ignore, however, accidentally answer while driving in the car and your phone is in your pocket so you don’t know who’s calling (or well, something along those lines).

That’s what happened to me today, except the phone call was painless and actually made me appreciate the company even more.  How is that possible?  I’ll explain.

I’ve had an iOS developer account for a few years now and up until this year, I’ve always renewed it every March.  The reason I’m not renewing the iOS developer account this year is because I don’t need it anymore.  The new BestTechie website is a responsive design, meaning, it looks great on all devices (computers, tablets, and smartphones), so we really no longer need to have the BestTechie app in the App Store (plus it hasn’t been updated in quite some time).  Thus, I decided to not renew the account.

Now back to the story.

This morning I’m driving and my phone starts ringing, I hit the button on my steering wheel to answer the call and say “Hello?” the voice on the other end of the call (let’s call him Joe) says, “Hello, this is Joe from Apple, I’m calling to speak with Jeffrey Weisbein,” “This is Jeff,” I replied.  I had a feeling this would be about my iOS developer account and as it turns out, it was.  Joe went on to tell me that he was calling as a courtesy to remind me (just in case I wasn’t aware) that my iOS developer account was up for renewal in a few days (March 15).  Meanwhile, I kept waiting for these words to make their way into my ear, “Would you like to renew your developer account?” to which I would reply, “No,” and to which I would be asked, “Why not?”

But none of that ever happened.

In fact, the reminder was the only thing Joe said to me, after I said thanks for the reminder, Joe followed up with “Do you have any questions that I could answer while you have me on the phone?” “No,” I said, he then said to have a good day (as did I) and we went our separate ways.

Not once did I feel pressured to renew, nor did I have to defend my reasoning for not wanting to renew — none of that was even asked.  It was the most pleasant subscription renewal phone call I ever had.  If only they were all that way.

Thank you, Apple.  Your customer service is truly above and beyond all others.