The $60 Question
What's the world coming to? A price tag on questions?
Now I've heard it all! I know that times are tough and that many companies have to do extraordinary things to survive and many are even going so far as charging their customers for service. But what kind of strategy is it to continually and openly antagonize your customers? Well, a good one if you want to get rid of them.
Let me explain a friend of mine is the CEO of a local technology company. It's a small business, been around ten years or so, grows consistently. The company used to bank with the little neighborhood bank down the block. It was a friendly relationship, and everyone was satisfied. Then the bank was bought by a slightly larger local bank. Not much changed, the people were the same, they were still down the block and the CEO enjoyed the advantages of the personal relationship he had always enjoyed with his banker.
A few months ago, the bank was bought again. This time lots changed. The first letter he recalls seeing was the one that notified him that the online service he was now paying $5.95 a month for was going up to about $50, a month, within 6 months. When he called to discuss the charges with his local banker, the banker admitted that he knew nothing about it. He checked it out and found out it was true, and he could do nothing about it. (Oh how embarrassing!)
Over the next few months the CEO began seeing strange new charges on his bank statements. Each time he found one he called the manager, who promptly reversed the charges. Although the manager is a nice guy, calling him about these charges is getting annoying and takes an awful lot of time. It's just not fun anymore.
Up until now, he's not made a move to find a new bank, after all they do keep reversing those charges. But last week came the last straw. He received a notice from the bank that he was being charged $60 for ASKING A QUESTION about one of his accounts.
When his blood pressure returned to normal, and he could speak again, he called me to describe this horrendous series of customer indignities that qualify as a textbook case in customer abuse! Needless to say he is busy broadcasting the news to as many of his influential business friends as possible. Whatta story! It gets a laugh every time.
But who will have the last laugh in this case? The customer, who is at this moment looking for a new banking relationship, and his network of associates who will take his advice and stay away from the offending institution.
While most companies don't indulge in the sport of antagonizing customers to this degree, many do so in small ways that gradually wear away at the relationship. It's a good time to look at your organization and see where you might have procedures or policies that alienate your customers.
Start with the phone system. Is yours friendly, welcoming, easy to understand and traverse? Listen to your voicemail message, does it give accurate information about where you are and when you will actually return? Take a look at your forms and applications are they easy to understand and fill out, do they make sense to the customer?
Is your website a pleasure to use, or are people abandoning you? How about those return policies easy to understand, clear and fair?
I think you see where I am going here. Are you making it hard, or easy for customers to do business with you? Are you delighting your customers, satisfying your customers, or ticking them off? It's as good a time to take a look at the things you do to build and support the customer relationship (and a good time to eliminate the things you do that erode the relationship.)
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