#2 When Apple's Genius Bar Failed: How Apple Community Rescued My AirPods Mic?

One-Pager from the Lens of "Product Manager @ Customer Experience, Apple"

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Introduction

As a new user of Apple’s AirPods, I experienced an issue recently and after finding the solution myself through internet, I found a product opportunity to address these kind of solutions and if I am a Product Manager of Apple’s Customer Experience & Knowledge Pipeline, I would love to address this problem as below.

source: Apple Valley Fair

Problem Story

I have been using AirPods Pro 2nd and I started experiencing an issue continuously with the mic. During normal calls and WhatsApp calls, my voice is not audible to other side, it’s fading out and coming back intermittently. While I can clearly hear them, I understood the issue is with Microphone and not on Network because, I couldn’t hear others if network is the problem.

I tried basic things like checking any firmware updates, resetting AirPods, reconnecting it to my devices, unfortunately nothing worked.

There comes Apple’s Customer Support

• I reached out to nearby Apple Store to get checked at “Apple’s Genius Bar” (Technical support).

• Apple technician verified and informed me that Right AirPod has an issue and has to be sent to their repair depot.

• After 7 business days, I got my AirPods with same issue right there!

• And again, I took it to same “Genius Bar”, they did the same checks and couldn’t find the problem with their hardware checks.

Why is this a Problem Now?

The worst part is Apple’s Genius Bar is running hardware checks continuously with no effort of identifying the customer’s problem by trying it out themselves.

I almost decided to stop using Apple’s AirPods because their customer support or so called “Genius Bar” is not able to identify the issue at all (forget about resolving it). This made me wonder:

1. What others problems are experienced by customers who got to Genius Bar?

2. How many occurs per week?

3. What decisions those users (who didn’t get proper support) take?

4. Do they continue using that particular device?

5. How does this whole experience impact a brand’s business?

While it might not look an immediate impact on business, but the new customers might stop if one shares about this problem.

Data

source: Business Apps

Proposed Solution: “AppleAnswers”

I tried a final step of resolving it myself, took a Notion page and wrote what could be possible issues, and reading different forums on internet and then finally found a solution (fix) that worked from “Apple Community” Discussions here.

This below solution is shared by a community member in Dec 2020 and today (when writing this one-pager) is Oct 2023, still I am facing this issue.

AppleAnswers will be a platform or system that seamlessly connects the collective wisdom of the Apple community (including forums, discussions, and user-contributed solutions) with Apple's in-house customer support teams, including the Genius Bar. This product could facilitate the quick identification and resolution of customer issues, ultimately enhancing the customer support experience.

Extended Thoughts

Of course, there are questions and thoughts to brainstorm:

1. How do we identify valid solutions or fixes that worked? (based on votes?)

2. How can we connect them to Engineering pipeline to learn why it’s happening?

3. Can we also come up with rewards or ranking system on Apple Community forums, encouraging more answers?

4. Long-term vision of integrating other platforms like Reddit?

Conclusion

• We know there are issues those not always customer support could resolve and it’s completely okay because they are not the one who is experiencing them.

• If we can bridge the community answers to in-house platform, this enables quick fixes while the core team gets more visibility in solving them permanently.

• Results in the Best Customer Experience while improving unresolved issues in Apple’s devices.

Warm Regards,

Phani 🚀