Contact Center Solutions Featured Article

Apple Customer Service Call Centers Flooded Immediately After iPhone 6 Launch

September 24, 2014

Apple phones may be designed for ease of use, but the new iPhone 6 may not be as intuitive as Apple originally expected. On the day that the iPhone 6 launched, Apple's customer service call centers were quickly overwhelmed by the extremely high call traffic, which only increased as time went on. While callers can usually expect to reach Apple customer support within 3 minutes of calling, several customers had to wait up to 20 minutes before speaking to an agent.


On the day of the launch, it appears that Apple had prepared for the influx of calls by bolstering the call centers with extra staff, which reduced wait times to just over one minute in the first few hours. However, as more and more iPhone owners called with questions about their device, the average wait time soared up and up until about Saturday morning.

By this time, average wait time had increased past the 20 minute mark, which left many customers dissatisfied. While Apple is unsure why the spike was so much larger than anticipated, the fact that several Apple Stores had run out of the devices in only a few hours suggests that the iPhone 6 is in short supply.

Considering that Apple had sold over 10 million iPhone 6 and 6 Plus units were sold in the first three days of availability, it's easy to see why the call centers received so much traffic. While it only outsold the iPhone 5s by one million units, a similar spike in call center traffic was recorded on that day as well. However, customer support callers only waited an average of 7 minutes during the peak of that phone's sale, which suggests that either Apple is ill-equipped to handle this level of customer support or that the iPhone 6 is simply more complicated and leads to users asking more questions.




Edited by Maurice Nagle



Home