Customer retention is an area companies fail at hardest and most often. It makes me wonder what is being taught at business schools.
There's nothing wrong with asking exiting customers if there were/are problems that could be addressed. But there absolutely is something wrong with badgering/harassing/tricking or wasting the time of customers leaving, as it will cause reputational damage and worse cause repeat custom to almost disappear.
It is just yet another example of how modern US business culture values the Short over Long Term. In the short you see a slightly lower Customer turnover, but in the long term you see a HUGE reduction in returning customers (who remember the exit process from last time).
To be clear: A short survey makes it feels like a company gives a crap about why you're leaving, but it needs to be via the same mechanism you used to sign up (e.g. online sign-up? Then online exit), and it shouldn't feel like a way to block the exit. This is particularly problematic if you're forced to call and the person on the other end is on commission. They're more often than not just there to wear you down and make you hate interacting with the company, by its very nature if you do leave you will be unlikely to return since that's the last thing you remember.
I've blacklisted multiple businesses for that practice and I often check the cancellation process during sign-up to avoid it.
Urgh, Adobe wound me up so much with that block the exit bullshit I'll go out of my way to tell anyone that needs it how to get out of their cancellation fee haha. Must have cost them a few grand by now in cancel fees never mind bypassed retention. They probably don't care but the person who can now bypass the timewasting and cancel out for free does.
Posting it on HN would probably get someone to fix it.
It's not a hack or anything illegal, lurking Adobe lawyer, put your headed paper away.
They don't care, it won't matter, and sadly just works better than not employing the practice. It's particularly sad given for certain co such as Adobe it's kind of hard to not go with it. E.g their file format is part of existing bits in the pipeline. They know, and it's been their strategy for decades now.
I unsubscribed from the NYT a while ago due to the cost. I was planning on resubscribing in the not-too-distance future. But despite letting me subscribe online, they didn't let me cancel online.
So, when I resubscribed to a few other papers again, the NYT wasn't on that list. It'll be a decade before I think about giving them another cent.
I thought I heard that they ended this practice now, but...well, I don't trust them anymore. Once trust is burned, it takes a long time to recover.
Liked the video but think that’s only because it confirmed my biases.
I have seen many companies succeed despite them clearly viewing their users as pawns. In fact, most YC companies that try to sell me things are blatantly transactional and while that has always ruled me out as a customer many of them are doing just fine.
Would be better to have hard data rather than empathy porn.
They make the highest end guitar audio processing HW and are constantly providing free SW updates that greatly enhance the unit. Their lack of a subscription model for SW flies in the face of current HW/SW product monetization "wisdom." Compare to their competition which maybe pushes out one or two firmware updates over the life of the product that are mostly bug fix.
I have bought every main release of their flagship product and will keep doing so even though it is way more than a bedroom player needs. If you are into guitar and a hacker, I recommend checking it out. It is a massive evolution beyond the old school pedalboard and tube amp world (which of course have their old school charms). It has an insane level of depth and most parameters are controllable in real time.
Since this is advice for startups, the title is slightly inaccurate. It is not so much “for life” as it is for the duration of the honeymoon period; i.e. customer acquisition phase. When the VCs want their payout, it will inevitably change, and customers will notice.
To be fair, I was puzzled by rapid positive comments on HN, but lack of significant Amazon comments and/or easily finding significant prior coverage of the book. That said, book did receive prior coverage on HN, so sort of makes since:
Reader mail is probably the favourite part of my job. I now go out of my way to let people know how much I appreciate their work. It feels so good to know that your work had an impact on another person's life.
My wife recently had some poor customer service ordering some earrings from mejuri.com. She selected rush shipping to try and get it in time for a birthday. They took two days to process the order and shipped it dhl which apparently doesn’t work on saturdays. A tiny box with rush shipping was going to take 6 days. The company has no apparent phone number and the chat support basically inundated her with copy pasted information from their faq when she asked for a refund on the rush shipping. Talk about disappointing your customers.
While advice is reasonable for a new startup, to me there is a notable gap between “how to earn customers” and “for life” — they even acknowledge that the common pattern is to scale to being a monopoly, then exploit the related leverage over customers. Am I missing something, or is that their advice?
It's weird that these days, caring about your customers is considered a superpower. It just shows the awful level of service and support that passes as "customer care" these days.
I recently bought a hat from Boston Scally Company. It wasn't a super cheap made-in-China $10 hat like you can easily find on Amazon or eBay, I paid $50 for it. When I got the hat, it was covered in threads. Some needed to be cut off. When I emailed the company, their reply was "we're sorry you aren't happy with the quality of the hat, you can just remove the threads and it won't affect the integrity of the hat."
That's the wrong response. The correct response is "We're embarrassed the hat shipped to you like that. Would you like us to send you a replacement or do you want to send it back for a refund?" I am certainly not going to buy anything from this company again when they can't acknowledge their screw up.
Own your mistakes. In almost all cases it's the right move and you earn the respect of the customer.
I bought a fold up bed from a company in the UK and one of the wooden slats broke so I emailed them to find out where I could buy a replacement. They replied with 'What was the model number?' and 'What is your address?'
They sent me a free replacement and a spare in case it happens again (which several years later it hasn't).
Such a simple gesture, with no fuss whatsoever, and here I am praising them https://www.jaybe.com/ whenever I get the opportunity.
I bought it from a third party retailer so they would have been within their rights to give me the runaround instead.
I have a similar memorable story from O’Brien water sports. We had a set of kids’ water skis where we’d lost one of the thumbscrew bolts to keep them connected while young kids are learning (100% our fault, 0% theirs).
I wrote the company to ask where I could buy a replacement. The agent sent me a mail with a picture asking me to confirm that was the part I was talking about, mailed a replacement strap and two thumbscrews for free, and emailed a few days later to check that it arrived in time for our lake vacation.
It made such an impression that O’Brien is my default/check-them-first brand.
Reminds me of the reaction of the company we bought our greenhouse tunnel from.
Two years after buying it I wanted to install a windows in the rounded roof section of the tunnel.
I made a mistake and cut the wrong section of the roof destroying this section of the transparent plastic cover.
A new cover section would have cost me about 140 Euros if I bought it here. I asked the company what they would charge me for a new sheet (4 by 6 meters btw).
They just asked for my address and told me they would send one free of charge. And they did.
I was positively blown away.
Since then I have recommended about 2.5 to 4k of revenue to them from family and friends.
I bought a display bin/trash can (!) from a department store. When I got home I realised that one of the rails was broken on one of the drawers, and contacted the retailer. They took my details and about 6 weeks later (I had totally forgotten/given up at this point) I received a hand written letter from the manufacturer apologising with the replacement part. I was in absolute shock.
To an MBA the ideal situation is one in which your customers are exploited just enough not to hate you so much they go through the trouble of switching to someone else. Ideally they have nobody else they can switch to so you can make them hate you as much as possible without them showing up to your building with a gun, aka the ISP and telephone provider model.
The sad part is that it works. My favorite companies are not the ones I've given the most money, because my favorites have provided tremendous value for my dollar. I might adore Leatherman and use their products multiple times a day but the fact is I spent $150 fifteen years ago and never had to again.
We design all products locally here in the US. Final assembly is done in PRC to maintain high level of quality at an affordable price."
PRC is the "People's Republic of China"
I think if you read between the lines their response is them basically telling you this. The hat was made-in-China that you ordered of a website from your house for 50 dollars and your expecting it to be tailor made quality. I don't know if you order many clothes online but this is how it is. I've ordered jackets, dress shirts, socks, pants everything and they come this way about a quarter to 50% of the time. If you have ever worked at retail clothing stores this is what the employee's sift through before it goes out on the floor.
Responses from companies and customers are all subjective. I've had BHER send me replacement paint, does it mean I only buy from them, no, so what difference does it make to them or me. Its quite a bit easier to just embrace returning stuff and not having high expectations with stuff that from your vantage point is a blackbox.
For $50, I wasn't expecting tailor made bespoke hat or anything like that. I was expecting them to take some modicum of care shipping and packing it though.
Kangol hats are made in China and sell at similar price point. They're nice hats for the price. By contrast, the finish on this hat was less than I'd expect when buying a hat from the $10 rack at the gas station.
I've ordered lots of garments online over the years and this was by far the poorest presentation I've ever seen.
Well my dude, fair enough. Maybe I misunderstood your first comment as I thought maybe you didn't know the hats were made in China but for the price point I hate to tell you this but $50 is the new $20. I really don't expect quality clothing for under $100 - $150.
My personal opinion, is that it would be worth *your time* to go bespoke. There is no reason to not treat yourself to quality clothing in your lifetime. Complaining takes no real effort and you are worth putting the time into.
Theft is the easiest way. Good customer service is hard but pays off in business success. You just need to choose where on the spectrum you want to land. If you choose poorly your customers will sense your disdain for them and go be customers elsewhere.
I bought a large Jackery battery generator a year or two ago and was having trouble finding anywhere to buy a second charger for it including their website. I emailed customer service asking where to buy it and they asked for my address to send it to me for free. I'll be recommending their products now.
The pain point your problem is solving is not big enough. It’s a vitamin. If there was a problem with their painkiller or they didn’t have alternatives they would be hammering on your door. (note, I have no idea what your product or company does)
Why do you expect them to? Did they have a bad experience for some reason?
I personally avoid talking to customer's service as much as I can. I'm more likely to give up on a product or switch to alternatives than say anything. There are a very few exceptions to this. I suspect many other people are like me.
Fair enough. That point they made sounded weird to me. I'd certainly not be thrilled to talk to the owner of any of the products I use. Although I'd like if the owner was involved when I'm trying to fix something.
I'm an engineer, so I can definitely think about products I use which I'd enjoy talking to the developers and designers. Sometimes they can be the owners too. But if they are more about getting a business running and started, I don't care about that stuff. So, I wouldn't personally want to talk. I suspect people who are interested in running a business would like that. So, maybe your users are not mainly from that segment of the population.
There's nothing wrong with asking exiting customers if there were/are problems that could be addressed. But there absolutely is something wrong with badgering/harassing/tricking or wasting the time of customers leaving, as it will cause reputational damage and worse cause repeat custom to almost disappear.
It is just yet another example of how modern US business culture values the Short over Long Term. In the short you see a slightly lower Customer turnover, but in the long term you see a HUGE reduction in returning customers (who remember the exit process from last time).
To be clear: A short survey makes it feels like a company gives a crap about why you're leaving, but it needs to be via the same mechanism you used to sign up (e.g. online sign-up? Then online exit), and it shouldn't feel like a way to block the exit. This is particularly problematic if you're forced to call and the person on the other end is on commission. They're more often than not just there to wear you down and make you hate interacting with the company, by its very nature if you do leave you will be unlikely to return since that's the last thing you remember.
I've blacklisted multiple businesses for that practice and I often check the cancellation process during sign-up to avoid it.