The Threat to Leave

Based on a few customer service experiences I've had over the past few months, I realize that you are eligible for much better deals or incentives to stay with a company if you threaten to stop being a customer with them, which in my mind doesn't seem right. If you can offer incentives to a person who is leaving, why can't you just offer these to all your customers, then maybe they will stay anyway. I have a few examples here:

This wasn't a threat to leave, but basically sometime last year there were some problems with the quality of the cable service here in Grand Falls-Windsor. A co-worker of mine had a friend who called in and complained, and as a result got a 10% discount for a 12 month period on her bill. Realizing this, my co-worker decided to call in with the same complaint and was offered a 5% discount due to the inconvenience she was facing. Realizing her friend got double, she had the call escalated to a supervisor and ended up with the 10% discount herself. This is an example of word getting out and discounts not always being the best way to deal with situations. Word could have easily spread throughout the community, and probably did, and a lot of 10% discounts were probably handed out. (Note: I was not having cable difficulties, and have too many principles to call in and lie to get the discount).



When I purchased my car last year it came with a free subscription of OnStar for one year. When that free year was up, the cost became $24.99 per month to keep it. I did want to keep it because it has a lot of cool features and offers a security blanket in emergency situations, and with me driving a lot that isn't a bad thing, however apparently I don't value my life at $24.99 per month because that seemed way too steep for me, so I called in to cancel it. I didn't call in to negotiate a new price, but as soon as I said I was going to cancel it, they offered me a discounted price of $14.99 per month. So just $10.00 off per month because I was going to unsubscribe. I guess it makes sense because $14.99 per month is better than $0 per month, but once again if word spreads about this, OnStar is going to be out of $120 per year from a lot of customers, or they are going to piss a lot of them off if they don't offer them the same discount.



Just a few minutes ago I called VISA and decided to cancel my Aerogold card. Basically I am not getting enough benefit from it to justify the $120 annual fee. I'm more likely to get a flight out of the $120 I save annually vs. the amount of aeroplan miles I get and the amount it takes to fly anywhere decent. As soon as I say I'm cancelling, the customer service agent offers me more bonus reward miles as an incentive to stay. I didn't take them, but all I had to do was say I was going and BOOM I get a better deal.

In summary, it is good customer service to offer people incentives when they are having difficulties, and good job to all the above companies for being decentralized enough to allow a front line employee try to resolve my problem rather than just let me leave, but really in the end you're making things harder for yourself. Word of mouth is a powerful thing and if word leaks and you're not willing to offer these deals to everybody then you're going to have a lot of pissed off customers on your hands rather than just the one with the complaint. Sure $14.99 seems better that $0 to OnStar, but potentially losing that extra $10 of revenue from all your other clients who get a hold of the news doesn't seem worth it.

So my advice to everyone who reads this, call all your companies and threaten to leave and see if you can get some sort of reward or incentive to stay. Who knows you might get a great discount or a free gift out of it!

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Get Free - The Vines