Legal Commentary

How do you treat your best customers?

By Patrick J. Lamb

Once again, the real world provides wonderful lessons.

My wife calls to tell me to cancel a credit card--the bank had raised our interest rate to 30% "because we didn't carry a balance."  Our primary card is at 9%, so 30% isn't going to cut it.  I call the bank (which I won't identify , but if you guess Citibank, well, let me just say you're an incredibly good guesser) and they tell me they are sorry to lose me as a "terribly valuable" customer after 20 years.  Would I consider staying if they lowered the  rate to 7.9% for six months?

Put aside the financial aspects of this decision.  How should I feel knowing that I am a "terribly valuable" customer but they were raising my rates to 30%?  They could have offered me the Taj Mahal and I would not remain a customer. 

This is the world of credit card companies, cable companies and phone companies.  Never treat your best customers like your best customers.  Give your new customers better rates and keep milking your loyal customers for all you can get.

Sad way to run a business.   But then again, when law firms seek new business, how many of them do the very same thing?

At some point loyal customers are going to respond like I did: if my loyalty only matters when I complain, "cancel the damn account."

Full post as published by In Search of Perfect Client Service on March 02, 2010 (boomark / email).