WHY WE COLLECT

We collect your personal information because it helps us deliver a superior level of customer service. It
enables us to give you convenient access to our products and services and focus on categories of greatest
interest to you.

your personal information helps us keep you posted on the latest product announcements, software
updates, special offers, and events that you might like to hear about.

WHAT IS COLLECTED

 When you interact with Apple, we may collect personal information relevant to the situation, such
as your name, mailing address, phone number, email address, and contact preferences; your credit
card information and information about the Apple products you own, such as their serial numbers
and date of purchase; and information relating to a support or service issue.

collect information for market research purposes

 We may use personal information to provide products that you have requested as well as for
auditing, research, and analysis to improve Apple’s products.

Apple’s Customer Privacy Policy covers the collection, use, and disclosure of personal information that
may be collected by Apple anytime you interact with Apple, such as when you visit our website, when you
purchase Apple products and services, or when you call our sales or support associates. Please take a
moment to read the following to learn more about our information practices, including what type of
information is gathered, how the information is used and for what purposes, to whom we disclose the
information, and how we safeguard your personal information. Your privacy is a priority at Apple, and we
go to great lengths to protect it.

Why we collect personal information

We collect your personal information because it helps us deliver a superior level of customer service. It
enables us to give you convenient access to our products and services and focus on categories of greatest
interest to you. In addition, your personal information helps us keep you posted on the latest product
announcements, software updates, special offers, and events that you might like to hear about.

If you do not want Apple to keep you up to date with Apple news, software updates and the latest
information on products and services click www.apple.com/contact/myinfo and update your personal
contact information and preferences.

What information we collect and how we may use it

There are a number of situations in which your personal information may help us give you better products.
For example:
  We may ask for your personal information when you’re discussing a service issue on the phone
with an associate, downloading a software update, registering for a seminar, participating in an
online survey, registering your products, or purchasing a product.

 When you interact with Apple, we may collect personal information relevant to the situation, such
as your name, mailing address, phone number, email address, and contact preferences; your credit
card information and information about the Apple products you own, such as their serial numbers
and date of purchase; and information relating to a support or service issue.

 We also collect information for market research purposes — such as your occupation and where
you use your computer — to gain a better understanding of our customers and thus provide more
valuable service.

 We collect information regarding customer activities on our websites, MobileMe, and the iTunes
Store. This helps us to determine how best to provide useful information to customers and to
understand which parts of our websites, products, and Internet services are of most interest to them.

 We may use personal information to provide products that you have requested as well as for
auditing, research, and analysis to improve Apple’s products.

Your Apple ID and related information

The Apple website, as well as Apple services such as MobileMe and the iTunes Store, allows you to create
an “Apple ID” based on your personal information. This convenient service saves you time and allows for
easier use of our web services

Apple also enables you to share photos or movies through MobileMe Gallery, set up allowances on the
iTunes Store and purchase and send gift certificates and products, to family members, friends or
colleagues. To fulfill your request, Apple may require personal information about the person to whom you
are sending the product or service such as their name, physical address, email address, and so on. The
personal information you provide about that person is used only for the purpose for which it is collected.
Apple will not use the information collected to market directly to that person.

Apple takes your privacy very seriously. Apple does not sell or rent your contact information to other
marketers.

Within the Apple Group

To help us provide superior service, your personal information may be shared with legal entities within the
Apple group globally who will take steps to safeguard it in accordance with Apple’s privacy policy.

With our service providers, vendors, and strategic partners

There are also times when it may be advantageous for Apple to make certain personal information about
you available to companies that Apple has a strategic relationship with or that perform work for Apple to
provide products and services to you on our behalf. These companies may help us process information,
extend credit, fulfill customer orders, deliver products to you, manage and enhance customer data,
provide customer service, assess your interest in our products and services, or conduct customer research
or satisfaction surveys.

How we protect your personal information

Apple takes precautions — including administrative, technical, and physical measures — to safeguard your
personal information against loss, theft, and misuse, as well as unauthorized access, disclosure,
alteration, and destruction.

The Apple Online Store and iTunes Store use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption on all web pages where
personal information is required. To make purchases from the Apple Online Store or iTunes Store, you
must use an SSL-enabled browser such as Safari, Netscape Navigator 3.0 or later, or Internet Explorer.
Doing so protects the confidentiality of your personal and credit card information while it’s transmitted
over the Internet.

Kids

Apple recognizes that parents, guardians, or other adults often purchase our products for family use,
including use by minors. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13 for
marketing purposes, but because some information is collected electronically

Our companywide commitment to your privacy

As we said, Apple takes protecting your privacy very seriously. To make sure your personal information is
secure, we communicate these guidelines to Apple employees and strictly enforce privacy safeguards
within the company. In addition, Apple supports industry initiatives, such as TRUSTe, to preserve privacy
rights on the Internet and in all aspects of electronic commerce.

CASE 2
Be Calculating

If you're a service provider, customer expectations can pose a major challenge. That's because
expectations are wondrous creatures: They grow, they shrink, they change shape, they change
direction. They shift constantly, and they shift easily. And how satisfied (or dissatisfied) your
customers are is determined by these expectations and your performance in meeting them.

If expressed as a calculation, customer satisfaction might look something like this:

    Your Performance    
Customer Satisfaction =
Customer Expectations
Watch for changes
If your customers' satisfaction level is changing, find out if something has happened, either at their end
or yours, to affect their expectations or perceptions. Whether that change in satisfaction level is skyward
or in the direction of the bottomless pit, analyze what's happening. If satisfaction is rising, find out what
you're doing right, so you can keep doing it; if satisfaction is slithering downward, figure out how to
reverse the situation before it falls off the chart.

Product and process

Now, switch back to your service provider hat and think about it: Both the product and the process are
important to customers. The product refers to the solution, system, response, resolution, deliverable or
result. Whatever form the product takes, customers want it to work properly, to meet their needs, and
to have that elusive quality of, well, quality. This is the technical element of service, and you're not likely
to have happy customers without it.

Sloppy service with a smile

Does that mean that it's OK to give customers incorrect information as long as you're empathetic,
friendly, and respectful in doing so? Obviously not. But providing correct information may not be nearly
as effective as correct information accompanied by empathy, friendliness, and respect. Focusing on the
process is a way to invest in a relationship

wait state
The preceding three standards, like most service standards, are intended to handle routine or recurring
situations. But what about situations in which you don't know what the time frame will be? For example,
think about the last time (1) a malfunction occurred that had business impact, (2) you didn't know what
caused the problem, yet (3) customers immediately began demanding to know when service would be
restored. In such a situation, what's a non-psychic to do?

The Best Mislaid Plans

If you want people to meet your expectations, you have to communicate what you expect.
Otherwise, you could fall victim to a miscommunication. As author of the book, Managing
Expectations, I’m my own best case study
 CASE 3
Putting the customer at the center of the universe

The key to implementing a successful CRM initiative is to first understand exactly what CRM is. Often,
businesses begin with an initial understanding, right or wrong, that motivates them to pursue a CRM
initiative. Several misconceptions emerge once they attempt to apply CRM to their business. The most
common is believing that CRM is the new cure-all for customer management evils that, if implemented, will
result in almost immediate benefit. Unfortunately, CRM by itself is no guarantee of customer retention.

At its best, CRM should address the following business goals:

 Increased customer acquisition and retention, as well as greater loyalty

 Expansion of profitable, long-lasting customer relationships
 Delivery of a consistent, relevant, high quality customer experience
 Continuous learning about customers (both business and consumer) and communication of that
knowledge across the organization
 Delivery of the right products and services tailored to meet customers' needs
 Increased customer equity
 Improved cost management

starting with a strategy

The next stage of the lifecycle is to develop a strategy for implementing CRM. Traditionally, software
suppliers have been a major source of information about CRM and most CRM initiatives have been born in IT
departments

Building a case on revenues, not cost cutting

The third stage of a CRM lifecycle is building the case for CRM. Some organizations focus on cost savings as
the sole justification for pursuing a CRM initiative. They have a logical reason: Cost savings are easier to
measure than potential revenues and executives are leery of investments without incontrovertible returns.
In the case of CRM, however, focusing on cost cutting rather than revenues can result in several problems,
not the least of which is a pursuit of the wrong initiatives.

The most successful CRM initiatives are those that spell out how CRM will improve the quantity and quality
of a company's revenue. The key is to not only use performance measurement to track important revenue
metrics, but also to look closely at what is measured and how it is measured.

Yet less than 10 percent of companies have a single, integrated view of the customer-which is a prerequisite
for winning customer loyalty. With this in mind, performance metrics should include:

 Customer profitability
 Customer loyalty
 Customer lifetime value
 Return on CRM investment

Creating a customer-focused organization

The fourth stage of a CRM lifecycle is to embed change throughout the organization-convincing everyone to
share a single focus on the customer. In my experience, the top companies-those that boast the most
successful, cost-effective CRM initiatives-embed change by building an integrated CRM architecture. In other
words, they align and incorporate all relevant aspects of organizational change. The following are three
fundamental rules of a CRM architecture:

The final stage of a CRM lifecycle is reaping CRM's benefits. Today, the concept of delighting the customer
has created a perception that businesses should exceed customer expectations at every point of contact and
then just sit back and watch the rewards flow in. In most cases, however, this is neither necessary nor
economical.

In a good CRM implementation, every customer receives the appropriate level of service. After all, not all
customers are created equal. They have different needs, expectations and behaviors, and offer different
value to a business. Treating them as equals by providing all customers with top-tier service may delight
them all, but in many cases, it is not profitable.

CASE 4
Sales force management systems are information systems used in marketing and management
that help automate some sales and sales force management functions. They are frequently
combined with a Marketing Information System, in which case they are often called Customer
Relationship Management (CRM) systems.

Sales Force Automation Systems (SFA), typically a part of a company’s customer relationship
management system, is a system that automatically records all the stages in a sales process. SFA
includes a contact management system which tracks all contact that has been made with a given
customer, the purpose of the contact, and any follow up that might be required. This ensures that
sales efforts are not duplicated, reducing the risk of irritating customers. SFA also includes a
sales lead tracking system, which lists potential customers through paid phone lists, or customers
of related products. Other elements of an SFA system can include sales forecasting, order
management and product knowledge. More developed SFA systems have features where
customers can actually model the product to meet their required needs through online product
building systems. This is becoming more and more popular in the automobile industry, where
patrons can customize various features such as color and interior features such as leather vs.
upholstered seats.

TO SALES MANAGER


o Providing current and useful sales support materials to their sales staff
o Providing marketing research data: demographic, psychographic, behavioural,
product acceptance, product problems, detecting trends
o Providing market research data: industry dynamics, new competitors, new
products from competitors, new promotional campaigns from competitors, macro-
environmental scanning, detecting trends
 o Co-ordinate with other parts of the firm, particularly marketing, production, and
finance
o Identifying your most profitable customers, and your problem customers
o Tracking the productivity of their sales force by combining a number of
performance measures such as: revenue per sales person, revenue per territory,
margin by customer segment, margin by customer, number of calls per day, time
spent per contact, revenue per call, cost per call, entertainment cost per call, ratio
of orders to calls, revenue as a percentage of sales quota, number of new
customers per period, number of lost customers per period, cost of customer
acquisition as a percentage of expected lifetime value of customer,

TO MKT MGR

 Identifying your best customers in place

 Doing marketing research to develop profiles (demographic, psychographic, and behavioral) of
your core customers
 Understanding your competitors and their products
 Developing new products
 Establishing environmental scanning mechanisms to detect opportunities and threats
 Understanding your company's strengths and weaknesses
 Auditing your customers' experience of your brand in full
 Developing marketing strategies for each of your products using the marketing mix variables of
price, product, distribution, and promotion
 Coordinating the sales function with other parts of the promotional mix (such as advertising,
sales promotion, public relations, and publicity)
 Creating a sustainable competitive advantage

STRATEGIC ADVANTAGE

 These systems could increase customer satisfaction if they are used with wisdom. If the
information obtained and analyzed with the system is used to create a product that
matches or exceeds customer expectations, and the sales staff use the system to service
customers more expertly and diligently, then customers should be satisfied with the
company. This will provide a competitive advantage because customer satisfaction leads
to increased customer loyalty, reduced customer acquisition costs, reduced price elasticity
of demand, and increased profit margins.

DISADVANTAGES

 difficult to work with

 require additional work inputting data
 dehumanize a process that should be personal
 require continuous maintenance, information updating, and system upgrading
 costly
 difficult to integrate with other management information systems

CASE 5