High Customer Satisfaction Rating Unchanged

Wristly Apple Watch Insider’s Report #25

October 27, 2015

Last July we reported that 800 members of the Wristly research project had given the Apple Watch a very high 97% approval rating. Last week we confirmed this rating with 96% of the now larger 1,500 Apple Watch owners panel stating their satisfaction with the Watch.

This very high satisfaction rating is unusual for most products, particularly first generation versions. The high satisfaction rating appears to be confirmed when we look at how quickly the Watch is becoming essential for the large majority of their owners, as measured by the amount of time they wear their Watches.

And 11% sleep with it!

In late July Tim Cook mentioned that Apple had measured that over 94% of their Apple Watch customers were wearing their Watches most of the time. We wanted to be even more specific and asked our panel in a little more detail how regularly they were wearing their Watches.

While in the aggregate our 97% “most of the time” group correlates to Apple’s number (with a small positive bias), the fun tidbit that we discovered is that 11% of our panel also sleep wearing their Watches and only charge their batteries in the morning while they get ready to go. When one considers that the Watch doesn’t yet support much in terms of sleep monitoring capability (some Sleep apps have launched but are limited in what they can track and currently don’t have real-time access to the sensors and heartbeat) says quite a lot regarding the attachment of some owners to the product. The primary reason given as to why they wear their Watch while sleeping is the ability to use the taptic engine as a wake up alarm so as to not disturb their partner.

Nuances Behind the Satisfaction Rating

Without revealing all the nuances that we are able to decipher from this last wave of customer satisfaction ratings — insights that are only available to our customers, there are a few data points we would like to share that continue to support our primary claim that the Apple Watch is either largely misunderstood or, as Neil Cybart suggests, “seriously underestimated” by the overall tech community.

Here are some of the most salient observations:

More women are “Very Satisfied” at 73% versus Men at 66% The 55+ age group states being “Very Satisfied” at 76% whereby the 35–44 cohort is relatively lowest at 60% Only 54% of those involved in building or marketing Apps are Very Satisfied versus 71% for all who do not work in the Tech industry And finally, 46% of those who bought the Watch primarily to evaluate it from a tech/business standpoint are very satisfied, versus 83% for those who primarily bought it as a Watch and 67% for those who got it as a gift.

This last data point will be our initial benchmark to compare with the many future Apple Watch owners who will receive their Watch as a gift this coming holiday season.

#12 on Best Buy Top Holidays Tech Gift

Last week, Best Buy revealed that the Watch was already the #12 most sought after tech gift this upcoming holiday season in the United States. Full details of their research here.

On the topic of gifting, here is what we learned from our panel:

18% have already gifted one and 21% will or are likely to gift one this upcoming holiday season

If we assess the consensus estimate of 6 million watches already sold worldwide, this would make the Watch reach over 1 million gifts this coming holiday season (note we do not poll users in China).

If you have an Apple Watch and are not yet part of our research project, please consider joining at www.wristly.co — it only takes a few minutes once a week and in return your contribution helps shape the collective understanding of the ground-breaking platform.

www.wristly.co