Customer Journey Map: A Comparison between Apple and Samsung

This article compares the customer journey map of Apple and Samsung, highlighting the differences in customer service, customer focus, and business acquisition modes. It also includes a personal experience of good and bad customer service with both companies.

Student Name
Course Name
University Name
08th-July-2018

Introduction
The product concept that I have chosen for this assignment is Mobile Phone. The
industry has many players and two specific products that I have chosen for this analysis is
one of the phones from Apple Incorporation and the second one being Samsung
Incorporation. I had one very good experience and with one of them a very bad experience.
We will be aligning with one of the alignment diagrams to explain both the poor customer
experience and good customer experience. With Apple Incorporation I had stupendous
experience throughout the customer lifecycle while with Samsung Incorporation I had very
bad personal customer lifecycle experience (Bernard, 2017).
Customer Journey Map
We would be using alignment model of Customer Journey Map to assess in this
assignment.

The basic areas covered in this cycle are on boarding, purchase, service issues during
the lifecycle of the product, customer retention policy and finally any closure if it happens. It
also looks into the fact whether customer remains a loyal customer post the first
experience.
Poor Customer Experience
I had one of the premium models of Samsung Incorporation which had costed me
near to $1,000 while buying and hence my expectation was of the highest order. Branding of
Samsung phones is among the premium segment and hence I was attracted towards it with
the kind of branding and Promotion Company had done for the product. My purchase
experience was very smooth; I went to the posh Samsung store which in itself is a very
superior experience. The staffs at the place were very friendly and abled to help me in
decision making (Canfield, 2017). I bought the recently launched premium phone of the
company and was explained all the features of the phone by the store manager. I bought
the phone and was on boarded by the company. For my specific need I even bought an extra
year warranty for any kind of damage that might occur(Bernard, 2017). My initial journey
with the product was very good and I had no problem. However in the third week of the
product usage, I dropped the phone by mistake and the edge part of the phone with corilla
glass suffered and it broke. I went to the Samsung centre and asked them for replacement
or repair. They examined the phone and conveyed that it will be sent to nearby facility and I
will have the phone back in few days. I seeked a replacement or a spare handset for those
few days but they refused. This was first bad experience with the company, as a premium
service provider I expected a replacement for few days so that my usage is not hampered
during that period. After three promised days I went to the store enquiring about the phone

and they still had no update for me. I realised that company’s selling store and its service
centre are at the same place and this is not the case with other companies. After 14 days I
received an update from there customer representative seeking information on how the
phone got damaged. It was an appalling experience as I was expecting my phone in a week’s
time, however after 14 days they were asking how the damage occurred. Finally after 27
days in which I kept enquiring and continuous bad customer experience, with
misinformation spelled all across, I was given my phone after repair. The whole experience
was in complete bad taste, and the fact that I paid for extra period of warranty was a serious
misrepresentation by the company.
Proto Personas diagram of the Situation
Name
Student Name and Picture
Behavior And Action
 Bad customer experience and hence
behaviour faced and shown was also
very rough
 Since I had paid premium for the
product and also paid extra money
for warranty extension period, I
expected better service
Demographics and Psychographic Details
Student Age:
Ethnic, Young Male, Passionate for gadgets
Need and Pain Point
 Customer Service need to improve
otherwise I won’t purchase the
product ever again
 I need premium service if I am paying

premium money for the product
As in the customer journey map, it is my usage experience where they lost me as a
customer. The experience overall was not bad when the product was with me. It is definitely
a nice product and can keep competitors at bay, but it is the period of service where the
company is doing very bad. As the alignment model of customer journey map would
suggest, the customer lost it with the company during the product-service stage (Johnson,
2018).
The three point where Samsung Incoporation loses are no customer focus, bad
customer service and experience and no focus to retain customer.
Good Customer Experience
After the bad experience I had with Samsung, few years later I bought the latest
iphone launched by Apple Incorporation. The buying process was easy as I booked it with
my network provider who in turn delivered the product at my place. The product itself is the
best in industry and hence expectation of better customer experience was expected. For the
first seven months I had lovely experience with the phone and didn’t even reached out to
service centre of the company.
Proto Personas diagram of the Situation
Name
Student Name and Picture
Behavior And Action
Very Happy with the way they treated me
I felt being at the centre of all the thing and

was given due respect as a customer
Demographics and Psychographic Details
Student Age
Ethic, passionate for gadgets
Need and Pain Point
No pain point felt, just maintain the service
offered.
However in the eight month of usage, the phone started facing heating issues. I
reached out to service centre, and to my amazement they provided with some really quality
experience. First of all the service centre was at different place compared to the store, they
even offered a pickup service for the damaged product. The whole premium feel is easily
visible in the service centre too. They received the phone and asked me to wait for half an
hour in the service lounge. This was not a bad experience, the waiting lounge had a good
multimedia facility and one can get entertained in some way or the other. In exact 25
minutes, they reached out to me stating that product is having heating issue because
motherboard has faced some strong charging from a wrong charger or being overheated
due to faulty charging point. I told them I have been using the charger provided, so it must
be because of charging point. They said it is not important, as they will provide a complete
new replacement and all my data would be shifted to the phone. This was a real good
experience, they offered that am I am willing to wait for few hours, and if not so they would
deliver the phone to my home place. I said please deliver the phone to my place, they even
offered me a spare handset for my usage (Rosenbaum, 2017).
This was a good experience after Samsung incorporation experience. In spot 4 hours
I had the completely replaced handset with me in my home comfort. The service delivered
was of stupendous quality and my experience overall was awesome (Bernard, 2017). On the
customer journey map I am currently using my second Apple phone as I upgraded when the

new iphone was launched. On the customer journey map, from the company’s perspective I
am on the repeat purchase segment.
Conclusion-Compare & Contrast Options
In both my experience, one can see how the two companies’ differed. If I didn’t have
a bad experience at Samsung Incorporation, I may have never moved towards Apple
Incorporation. In the same industry with similar priced tow premium products the
difference ended up being on the service side. The basic areas covered in this cycle are on
boarding, purchase, service issues during the lifecycle of the product, customer retention
policy and finally any closure if it happens. It also looks into the fact whether customer
remains a loyal customer post the first experience (Bernard, 2017). The customer journey
map model highlights on how one company lost me while the other gained me in the same
time frame (Harbich, 2017).
If ones compare and see what happened in both the occasions one can visualise that
customer service, customer focus and business acquisition modes are completely different
in both the options and this is one of the biggest differentiating factors in the business. On
one side at Samsung there was no focus on customer service, there was no customer focus
post sale; however there was huge thrust on business acquisition. When one contrast this
with Apple Incorporation, the brand premia exist and hence no focus on business
acquisition, however to retain customer the complete focus is on customer service.

References:
Bernard, G., & Andritsos, P. (2017). A process mining based model for customer
journey mapping. In Proceedings of the Forum and Doctoral Consortium Papers
Presented at the 29th International Conference on Advanced Information Systems
Engineering (CAiSE 2017)
Bernard, G., & Andritsos, P. (2017). CJM-ex: goal-oriented exploration of customer
journey maps using event logs and data analytics. In 15th International Conference on
Business Process Management (BPM 2017)
Canfield, D. D. S., & Basso, K. (2017). Integrating satisfaction and cultural background
in the customer journey: A method development and test. Journal of International
Consumer Marketing, 29(2), 104-117
Harbich, M., Bernard, G., Berkes, P., Garbinato, B., & Andritsos, P. (2017).
Discovering customer journey maps using a mixture of Markov models
Johnson, K. (2018). When It’s Not Actually About the Tech: Simple Design-Focused
Insight & Planning Tools for Technology-Based Library Services
Rosenbaum, M. S., Otalora, M. L., & Ramírez, G. C. (2017). How to create a realistic
customer journey map. Business Horizons, 60(1), 143-150