It’s a known issue: battery level on iPhone 6, 6+ and 7 is an unpredictable item. You could be at 20, 30 or even 40% on the display, and 10 seconds after you have the phone completely dead (and yourself desperately looking for a power outlet).

I decided to let my Twitter followers know that it happened to me also (here’s the tweet). It took less than 4 hours to get a tweet back from Apple Support account, saying “We’lle help out). They were not tagged in my tweet, by the way.

Lesson number one:

if you care about your customers (and about your brand image), you MUST actively practice social media listening, no matter how many resources you have to put in it.
After a couple of tweets conversation went private and Apple Support team asked for some technical data (eg serial number) and remotely started a diagnosis session on my phone to check battery status. Yep: if you’re under WiFi with enough power left, Apple can remotely run tests on your iPhone to check issues (terms and conditions apply, and you must accept them before test can begin).

Lesson number two:

if you care about your customers and you’re selling a connected device, there’s no reason why you should ask customers to physically go into your stores, lose time and get upset if you just need to check if there’s an issue.

Test was showing my battery health is good, so we did a couple of extra check on settings (eg all applications updated, kill and restart a couple of them, etc) and agreed that if the issue is coming back again I will directly contact them via DM ot they will boook an appointment at Apple Store for me. My iPhone does not need battery replacement (you can check if yours does).

Lesson number three:

if you care about your customers, make sure that agents can offer an alternative even when the issue can’t be solved. In my case it’s the ability to directly contact the agent or have a pre-scheduled appintment at Apple Store, in other cases might be a discount on the next purchase or a courtesy follow-up call in the next few days.

I guess there are no many comments to add: Apple is doing it right, from social media listening to pro-active CRM to big data (one thing I did not mention is that from few data provided they were able to check my customer history, preferences, other Apple products I own, etc) to direct email. Having everything integrated and in the cloud allows to smoothly run customer care operations across the board, with no pain for the final customer. Is your company doing the same?

(for iPhone owners: rumors around… it seems battery bug will be solved with iOS 10.3 release, no need to run remote battery tests also for your phone :D)