You would think that with the economy being what it is, companies would value every customer and do their best to keep them. Not our outsourced IT services company. In addition to our managed services contract (which seems low and fair), we get monthly statements for labor that we can’t correlate with anything we requested. No problem. We’re happy to be enlightened. But can we get them to call us to discuss it? No. Can we get them to come out or return a call to talk about upgrades we want to make? No. We’ve even sent an e-mail saying that we’re looking around at their competitors and would like to talk with one of their sales people to compare offerings. Do they respond? No. Will they be shocked when we reply that we’ve left them for the competition? You betcha!
Now you might say, “Well, they’re probably close to closing their doors.” Nope. They’re busy advertising and looking for new business.
We don’t have any problems with how our equipment works…we have close to 100% uptime. But there are a gazillion companies who can give us that. So why should we put up with lousy service? As you can imagine, we’re not! We know we’re not their biggest customer but hey…we’re at least worth the price of a couple of ads they run each month. Now they’ll need a new customer to pay for those.
Use this post to evaluate how you’re treating your customers. If you haven’t spoken with them recently, reach out to them to see what you can do to make their lives easier. Folks want their computers up and their technical issues solved, but they want to feel valued at the same time.
More about customer retention.
