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Poisoned Apple Antidote: 11 Ways For Apple To Recover Trust After Its Battery Slowdown Crisis

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The past several weeks have seen a string of mounting customer allegations against Apple, accusing the company of planning the obsolescence of its older 6 series iPhones through its last updates that limited those phones’ battery power and slowed them down significantly.

After radio silence, on Thursday December 28th, Apple finally posted a plausible explanation of why the last update indeed does hobble performance, and an apology, clearly trying to contain the reputational damage it has sustained.

Too Little, Too Late

While that explanation is a perfectly adequate one – it is too little, too late. What would have been acceptable before the trouble started – or upon the issue of the new updates – is wholly inadequate when forced by customer complaints, global law suits, and new diagnostic data provided by third party researcher John Poole of Primate Labs, confirming the swirling rumors that the updates purposely slowed performance of iPhones with aging batteries.

As a complete Apple aficionado (I own iPhones, iPads, MacBooks, MacAirs, iMacs...plus their stock ) I am profoundly dismayed. As a professional crisis manager, I am in a quandary about why they can not get ahead of such an issue in the first place. It is simply not that difficult  yet they fumble their messaging again and again ... destroying consumer and investor trust, shareholder value, and credibility with each forced communication.

Bemoaning Updates

Most of us have been bemoaning Apple's updates for a while, finding their changes to be one step backward after another (try searching in iPhone email today....a million times more difficult and incomplete than it used to be). Countless friends of mine have refused to update, doing so only when they’ve been tricked into hitting the wrong button, and find they've agreed to do it when they didn't mean to. Most have been unpleasantly surprised, and tried unsuccessfully to undo the update. And many have only at that point found their iPhones suddenly turning off in mid call or task...when it never happened before. (As for myself, I have refused to update 2 of my phones, and they are fine. The third I did update, and am still sorry. That phone, too, now is turning off and running slowly.)

Trust Lost

Yet, no matter how bad the upgrades, few of us had lost total trust in the update process, until now. But as it became clearer that the "upgrades" were feeling exactly like planned obsolescence, and were indeed significantly slowing down our iPhones without telling us, trust vanished.

And though the issue had been roiling for some time, Apple did not address it truthfully until well beyond when they had to. Global lawsuits have been filed. Trust has been abrogated. Then and only then, have they "spoken" – by spokesperson on Wednesday December 27th, and posted statement on Thursday, December 28th.

For shame Apple, you can do better than that.

Following is my prescription for what Apple can do – must do – right now, to rebuild trust among its most loyal followers, investors, and other customers and potential customers.

How Apple Can Restore Trust

1. Revamp the update process: Make it easy to refuse updates -- don't force them upon us, or trick us into accepting them.

2. Tell us what the updates are for, what they will do, and how our experience will change – before we install the update. Be explicit and truthful.

3. If we don't like an update, let us go back to our previous state. Make the upgrade process two-way and easy to reverse.

4. Communicate fully, clearly, explicitly, and truthfully. Forget the spin, defensiveness, arrogance, or radio silence.

5. When there is an issue brewing, address it immediately – long before you are "outed" by a third party. Get ahead of it.

6. Apologize when needed – early, sincerely and without prompt or caveat.

7. Make reparations – but before you need to or are forced to by law … just like you did on December 28th, lowering the cost of new iPhone batteries $50, from $79 to $29.

8. Start an ongoing dialogue with your customers -- drop the “Jobs” God-like attitude that is outmoded today. Listen...and act on what you hear. And let the public know you are doing it.

9. Empower your associates who are not at the Genius Bar to report what they are hearing, and apologize when needed. Ask them for serious reports about the pain points they are hearing about and listen to them (store associates, when pressed, always say that no one cares or no one listens to the issues they raise...and just send folks with feedback to the website – where no response is ever forthcoming.)

10. Respond to every complaint – even if it is frivolous.

11. Readjust your global attitude. No more stonewalling. Give people a reason to love and trust you again...because if you don't, your franchise will erode. And only your competitors want that, not the fan base that desperately wants to be loyal, and to see you continue to succeed.

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