Customer Relationship Management

While most of Apple's competitors were working towards customer satisfaction, Steve Jobs positioned Apple, way ahead, by designing, developing and offering them products, which were actually exceeding customers' expectations, in terms of the innovative concept, product look and feel, exciting features, which together created the WoW factor, making the users of Apples products, die-hard fans of it.

Being part of the Infosys Labs Mobility Solutions Group, I get to use iPhone and iPad for our Mobile Application Development and Demos to our Clients, it's truly fascinating experience for both developers and users of iPhone and iPad iOS based mobile applications. I also have my family, friends and colleagues advocating for Steve Jobs and his innovative creations, which has excited them.

Steve Jobs has always kept his eyes and ears open to gather new ideas, by observing things around him in his day today life and in thinking about the best possible ways to apply these ideas to create products in Apple, which would offer an exciting, yet simple and rich user experience.

With iPod, Apple really changed the life of music lovers, by enabling them to have this compact device to store and listen to their favorite music, moving them from bulky cassette and disc players. Whatever, traditional mobile phone companies could not do for numerous years, with their thousands of different models of mobile phones, Steve Jobs/Apple, did with it with iPhone, just one model, which become a Multi-purpose Smart Device - Mobile Phone, Camera, Music/Video Player/Recorder, Gaming Device, Application/Computing Device, to name a few. When we were young, we used to learn with slate and chalk piece, today children learn with iPad. Having started with iPad, its touch/orientation features, children (even adult), do not prefer to use any other device (Laptops/Computers), which do not support these features. There is a huge fan club for iMac Machines, who consider them as an inevitable part of their life. These are just a few example of the impact of Steve Jobs and Apple on Customer Delight.

Creation of Pixar Animation Studios and some of the best animation movies (like Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Cars, Wall-E), which both children and their parents enjoyed together are a distinctive proof of Steve's creative skills, resulting in master pieces, which fascinated people across all ages, young to old.

It is said that even during his last days in the hospital, he was mentioning about better design for the oxygen mask, which only goes to show his passion for design excellence, from the end user or customer perspective.

Steve Jobs is often compared with other great inventors like Thomas Edison and Henry Ford. The strength of Steve Jobs was not just coming out with innovative ideas, but also realizing them into excellent products and successful business, which clearly highlights his execution/entrepreneurship skills.

Normally, when a successful CEO of an organization passes away, the sales would take an immediate dip, as customers and shareholders would be worried about the future of that organization. But when Steve Jobs passed away, the customers/fans bought more and more Apple products, which were a brain child of Steve Jobs, as a mark of their respect for him, which indeed increased the sales significantly.

Steve Jobs has always kept the Customer or End User in the mind, while designing innovative products and solutions. He and his team had mastered the art of simplifying the complex technologies, with the easy user interface and rich user experience. The success of Steve Jobs is attributed to his Customer focused approach, well complimented by innovation and excellence in product design, which ultimately led to some of best creations, which instigated Customer Excitement.

When it comes to Customer Delight, we have lots to learn from Steve Jobs and follow his footsteps. Please share your thoughts...