Good Deals Should Be For Your Best Customers
How are you treating your best customers? Are they acknowledged through cleverly branded rewards programs? Are they getting good deals?
How are repeat customers treated as compared with the on-boarding of new customers?
Switch your lease from one car brand to a different car brand and you’ll get a discount.
Sign up for cable or satellite television and we’ll give you a lower bill for 12 months.
Why do some businesses feel the need to punish their best and most loyal customers by offering better deals to brand new customers?
About the Data
Data driven analysis and decisions are certainly valuable. Data driven decisions are also sometimes supported by assumptions.
The existing customer base will continue to spend as much this quarter as they did last quarter.
Our best customers can afford to pay a higher margin.
Our high-volume customers will never notice.
While this may seem silly, almost ridiculous, it is a popular path for many businesses. The quest for growth or the quest to stop the bleeding allow assumption-based leadership decisions to punish the best customers.
Who Cares?
There is at least one other assumption. The assumption that the customer doesn’t care.
Just smile and talk really nice, ask about their children, grandchildren, or pets. Chat it up a bit. It isn’t their money.
Have them use their corporate credit card. Remind them that they get personal points on dollars spent.
We could certainly bring up integrity and ethics, but many believe that is just the way corporate America rolls. It all works, until it doesn’t.
Good Deals
Like many things in life and in society, someone is paying. Free stuff or free deals are sometimes good for one party while a different party is paying.
Are you truly appreciating and rewarding your best customers, or are they being punished?
Who is really paying?
-DEG
Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSPTM), and culture expert. He is a five-time author and the founder of Appreciative Strategies, LLC. His business focuses on positive human performance improvement solutions through Appreciative Strategies®. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.
