Could the iPhone really have 99% customer satisfaction?

In May, we saw an interesting report from PerfectRec on the iPhone models most popular with consumers over the past 12 years. iPhone 13 ended up being the winner with 80% of users rating it 5/5 stars. Now the company has looked into Apple’s claim that iPhone has had a 99% customer satisfaction rate over the past seven years and concluded that it’s “almost statistically impossible.” So what’s going on? Read on to learn what research firm PerfectRec thinks is going on.

When I wrote the story in May about more than 600,000 users who have rated their iPhone over the years, I included the metric Apple shares about its earnings virtually every quarter by calling that independent firm 451 Research found that satisfaction with iPhone it’s 99%.

That caught the eye of PerfectRec analyst Wally Nowinski, and he decided to dig deeper into what could happen to Apple to get that score.

Now Wally has published an insight into the matter on PefectRec. A number of factors led him and PerfectRec founder and economist Joe Golden to believe that 451 Research is “likely using a highly unrepresentative sample of tech enthusiasts and early adopters to generate extraordinary satisfaction numbers that Apple then presents as representative of the consumers in general”.

Here are Wally’s highlights from his research:

• In its May earnings call, Apple said the iPhone 14 had a 99% customer satisfaction score citing 451 Research, a third-party research firm it hired. This was a satisfaction survey, not a Net Promoter survey.(Updated 7/14/23).
• Apple has made a similar claim on every single earnings call for the past seven years.
• Such a high customer satisfaction rating is nearly impossible to find using traditional survey methods and a representative sample.
• Independent sources believe that the iPhone’s satisfaction ratings are significantly lower than Apple’s claims.
• Apple said satisfaction with the iPhone is far higher than what other companies and consumer brands claim for beloved products.
• We asked Apple’s press team to explain how the company arrived at these results. They opened our email 73 times, but didn’t reply.

With all of that in mind, Wally says, “Our best guess is that Apple wants to make bold claims about customer satisfaction and has hired a third-party research firm that will produce those numbers to make them sound more believable and perhaps to provide a plausible deniability.”

Explaining better why a 99% satisfaction rate is nearly impossible, Joe Golden said:

Even if every single person truly loved their iPhone, it would still be nearly impossible to find nearly unanimous satisfaction using traditional survey methods, said economist and PerfectRec founder Joe Golden. A small percentage of people simply won’t understand the question or give the wrong answer by mistake, Golden said.

Continuing, Wally says:

And while it’s not by mistake, a small percentage of respondents like to give weird, contrary answers to pollsters. Scott Alexander called this phenomenon Lizardmans Constant, in reference to the 4 percent of respondents who told researchers the world was ruled by lizardmen. (Added 07/14/2023).

Another interesting example of how hard it would be to earn a 99%, “the three most popular movies of all time on IMDB areThe Shawshank Redemption,The GodfatherANDThe dark Knight. They have ratings of 9.2, 9.2 and 9.0 respectively.”

And independent iPhone satisfaction research this year from ASCI puts the iPhone at 81% significantly below the 99% of 451.

Interestingly, with Apple opening Wally’s email asking for the 99% satisfaction score out of 73 times and not responding, this may be hard for Apple to explain.

What do you think of 451 Research’s iPhone satisfaction ratings? Share your thoughts in the comments!