A little customer acquisition never hurt anybody. Yet, you would think from the recent plethora of warnings (this blog included) about the importance of customer retention and the prohibitive costs of buying customers that acquisition is toxic. It's not.
By now you most likely have heard that SprintNextel has fired a few thorny customers. In a letter to about 1,000 of its 53 million customers the company "terminated" these subscribers, who apparenlty had SprintNextel customer service on speed dial. The customers called the SN contact center an average of 25 times a month, a rate 40 times higher than average customers, according to published reports. I think it's a great move, but let's not overstate it. Yes, it's an interesting entry into the "do you fire customers?" debate. But, this is only 1,000 customers. If SN were really going to cut into its "below zero" customers, I'm sure 1,000 is a negligable amount. Also, it's very interesting to me that AT&T, which is in the middle of iPhone hell, used the occasion of SprintNextel's move to essentially say "hey, we would never do that."
SprintNextel is on the right track here. I just think they could have gone further if they expect this strategy to be truly impactful.
I have a personal beef with Apple. I try to never let personal matters interfere with what I choose to write about. But hey, if Apple wants to offer me the same price (.30 per song) for upgrading the sound quality on the 3,500 songs I've purchased over the past three years as it does for someone who bought three songs over the past three years, go for it. They do, after all, have leverage. Leverage is a rare and dangerous thing when you're a brand marketer. This is a lesson Apple is learning the hard way. The iPhone has been the most visible product launch of the "all blogger/all breaking news" era. Did you know the iPhone launch was actually considered a "developing story" on CNN last Friday? But with this visibility the iPhone launch has been placed under a microscope that is unwarranted and unfair. Of course there are going to be a few unhappy customers. Of course there will be some problems with partners. What did you expect? Problem is, the obsession with "always on" information means that CNN considers the iPhone and its associated issue a kind of techy Paris Hilton story. And as Paris would undoubtedly know, as the old saying goes: "The higher you climb the flagpole the more they see your ...... you know."
I like Dell's latest customer-centric approach, which looks to be balanced on design, quality improvements and retail expansion. Today it announced that it will customize its designs to include more colors and design tweaks to play to the WalMart audience (its newest account). In some ways it represents Dell's decision to bail on the direct sales market. In other, more important ways, it reflects what got the company to this point in time, which is listening to its customers and then executing on that knowledge. I'm not in the Dell most growable customer group right now. If you're reading this, you're probably not either. But there's a whole generation of kids that want their laptop the way they want it, and if they want purple, you make it purple.
This is what blogs are for right? I should be able to throw some ideas around that might not be fully-baked. So here goes in the best spirit of Web 2.0, 3.0.....whatever. I read The Black Swan recenlty, a book that is as disturbing as any business book I've ever read. And beleive me, I've read too many. The book has many radical ideas. Basically, it relates the concept of Black Swans to life and business. A "Black Swan" actually represents two things. First and foremost, it's something that society discovers that has always been there but has escaped our attention. Second, it represents the random event. It's the plane that appears in downtown Manhattan, the stock market crash, the customer that gets on the blogosphere and makes a personal experience spread like a boulder dropped into a pond. We cannot predict all Black Swan appearances. But we can prepare against the damage caused by them. I think this represents a whole new area of customer strategy. It may be an idea that we accept as readily as "long tails" a year from now. I urge you to read it. If you've read it, I'd love to know what you thought of it.
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