Mark Fitzpatrick

I honestly can’t recall one week in the last two years where I have not received a mailer from both Comcast and Verizon Fios offering their triple bundle service.

I already have Verizon wireless, fios internet, and home-office phone service. So the missing link was tv service. Comcast had that, and I just didn’t feel like switching.

So I get this call from both Comcast and Verizon one day – same day – and I decide I’ll pick up the call to essentially run an offer by them, and then tell them not to call anymore. Comcast obviously wants to add internet and phone service. Verizon wants to lock me up completely with tv.

I told Comcast, after Verizon tossed in enough to give me more for less (and who doesn’t love more for less), to make an offer now. I was doing this more for the fun of it. You should try it sometime. It will test your willingness to ask for something. I told the Comcast rep, “You guys will be calling me left and right AFTER you lose me completely, and then I’m going to cut off your calls.”

“So make your best offer now dude,” I said.

He had to go from his script, and so that was that….Sure enough, the calls flooded in a week later asking me, “What can we do to get you back as a customer?”

Nothing.

When the difference in the price is as small as it was, I didn’t want the hassle of changing. Most people are the same way.

The gap of what’s being offered must be significant enough to make someone want to get out of their seat. Right? If you’re at a football game, and you have the best seat in the house – say the owner’s suite – or maybe better, on the field passes – and someone says, “Hey, I’ll give you $50 if you give me your field pass.” You’d laugh at him.

You might want a minimum of $5,000 to give up what might be a once-in-a-lifetime experience (depending on your financial situation). You might want $10,000.

If on the other hand, you just had an average stadium seat, with an average view, you might change seats for $5. But here’s the key: IF, IF, IF it’s easy and essentially hassle free. If it’s not, you’re going to have to raise the benefit to get someone to move.

So back to “The Art Of Buying Back The Customers You Let Go.”

The secret is to not let them go in the first place.

It’s too difficult and time consuming in most cases to recapture people. I’m not saying don’t do it, but make it more of a priority to have the mindset that never lets good customers (clients) go to begin with. Easier said than done, but also easier than fighting to get a customer back.

But if you do want to go after winning a customer back, then you’d better make an over-the-top, no brainer offer….and make it hassle free. How could Comcast do that?

Realistically, it’s not worth the time to go through what they’d have to do. You can probably think of some of what would be needed, but making it so I’d not have to wait for a tech, not have to call Verizon and wait for their tech, and so on would be impossible. They can’t make is easy and hassle free for me. So game over. Verizon will have to screw up royally on their service to get me to consider changing.

OR another company would need to present a Game Changer – something new, something compelling, something so much better on price and service that makes you go “Wow!” Apple has done a great job of “Wow!” over the last 5-years.

But maybe you have a product or service that’s very easy to switch someone back over to. You just need to get them to try it again. If that’s the case, and it’s something someone would use over and over again – you may be able to afford to give them a month or two free, or just a free sample.

If it’s a digital information product that’s pretty easy.

Maybe you had a problem with your service – say a financial advisory service – but now you’ve made some changes and made it better. You could send an offer to soured customers saying, “Hey, we screwed up before and let you down. But we’re going to make it up to you and then some. Here’s how. Simply use our new service for free for the next three months. We don’t want a credit card. Just use the enclosed access codes, follow the recommendations, profit, and you decide if it’s worth joining the service again. And after three months, if you need another month to decide, send me a personal message, and I’ll get you that extra month.”

If you have a consumable product, it’s a little tougher, but you can still pull it off. Especially if it’s a product someone would use every day.

The moral is it cost a lot more money and time to fix something than to maintain it.

When you have multiple processes in delivering the end product or service it’s exceedingly more difficult to keep the customer (client is better) overjoyed, as more things can go wrong. Just ask someone in the home improvement business. So making sure everyone is on page in how you treat the customer must be a priority. Don’t assume everyone in the company knows what to do. Don’t assume something is a given.

There are so many sidebars to this post, my ADD is bouncing me off the wall. But I think there’s one marketing point worth circling back to.

With Verizon and Comcast….What if, instead of mailing slick marketing mailers, letters, and telemarketing calls they took those dollars two years ago, banked them and came it me one time, maybe twice, with a killer offer that considered how much they won’t have to spend on marketing to me?

Well, they would have about $150 a month in revenue from a lot more people possibly….and many month sooner.

Just my two cents from the trenches.

This all in an ADD kind of way reminded me of a GREAT experience I had with an online company. You’ll be blown away by what they did. I’ll tell you about soon.