Imagine if the American Heart Association decided to put all their research dollars into CPR techniques instead of healthy diet, exercise, genetics, and heart disease treatments?
Recently I attended the Cable Television Marketing Association Summit in Denver. CSG has tremendous clientele in this industry and provides a suite of CSR technology, billing platforms, and other integrated customer interaction services to some of the biggest players in cable. My team here at Quaero provides Customer Intelligence applications to drive optimized analytics-driven marketing decisions for these companies.
In no less than six different discussions with cable operators at the event, and in many of the breakout sessions, the conversation focused on retention offer management in the call center to stem increasingly punishing impact of customer attrition. Offer management at the point of when the customer is telling you they are leaving certainly can have an impact (we help clients do it every day), but all the energy and resources spent on retention offer management seems a lot like the ridiculous American Heart Association analogy I lead off with.
When we step back and consider some of the typical anecdotal reasons why customers attrite, it is rarely just to see what offers will be made at that final moment of truth. The reasons are more typically…
- They were wooed to you by a great low price offer initially… and were never really likely to be a long term customer of yours to begin with.
- They have had a bad experience or two with you, and finally were fed up enough to find someone else.
- The price vs. value equation did not make sense to them, and they finally drew the line (perhaps in reaction to a promotional price ending or price increase).
- Their needs have changed… but never were able to see an option that suited them in your offerings.
- Or maybe they never heard from you at all…
All of these are part of the complete customer experience… the summation of all the various touch points a customer has during their life cycle with you. Each of these “moments of truth” were opportunities for great offers to be made by you well in advance of that fateful cancellation call. Offer management left to the moment of cancellation is often too little too late… just like CPR is for the heart attack. So weave a healthy diet of great offer management into every moment of truth in your customer’s time with you… and don’t forget the benefits of exercising great customer engagement all through your customer’s life cycle.
