Monday 25 August 2008

(Customer) Happiness is a state of being

"It's interesting to note that marketers trying to maintain market share have a lot of work to do in reminding us that we're happy," writes Seth Godin in a blogpost titled Destroying Happiness.

While this seems obvious, in reality there are very few companies who take the job of 'keeping existing customers happy' seriously. Take a look around you. New customers are getting better deals on home loans than the old, loyal ones. "Sales desks" and "Service desks" often present pictures of stark contrast. Many credit card companies promise lifetime free cards to new customers while happily billing annual fee to existing customers.

Companies often rely on ugly "pain of switching" tactics to keep their existing customers from straying, while they go on a wooing spree to get in new customers. For instance, loan providers do it by imposing a steep balance transfer foreclosure fee.

In today's connected world, there's no bigger advertising than referral by a happy customer. No amount of Marcom spin can match that. Keeping customers happy goes much beyond sending them mail-merged birthday greetings. It includes taking a hard look at your business processes to ensure that the existing customer gets more than she expects.

Do you want bad word-of-mouth to negate your advertising? Or positive word-of-mouth to take your advertising to the realm of believability? Take your pick. This or this.