Patronizing and pestering

April 6, 2008

Patronizing and pestering your customers has to be a losing strategy. At least I hope it is. Here’s a couple of examples from this weekend.

Verizon Fios says “Hey wow! The product you’re interested in is not available!”

I’ve never been a fan of Comcast service but there aren’t many other options. Access has been spotty the last few days so I thought I’d see if Verizon’s FiOS service had made it to my neck of the woods. After putting my address in, I get this:

I guess this comes from the “never tell your customers ‘no’” school of thought, but what this boils down to is “yes, we have no banannas! Want an exciting kumquat?”

The thing is, I momentarily thought this was an affirmative response. So I felt happy. Then confused. Then disappointed. Then patronized.

Encyclopedia Britannica cudgels customers with its brand

When you have a respected brand and you’re fighting for your life against some online upstart, what do you do? Try to protect and expand that brand or turn your good name to mud on the off-chance you can make a buck this quarter? This is what Britannica does:

That login form appears over the top of the content a few seconds after the page has completed loading. If you dismiss the form by clicking the close button, the form does go away — but it pops back up a few seconds later. The marketing language is accusatory: “You are attempting to view a Britannica Online Premium topic.” Then you’re supposed to click that big orange button to get “activate” a “free trial.” Me? I just went to another Google search result.

Morals:

Verizon, when my nine-month-old son wants something he can’t have, we try to redirect his interest to something he can. That worked for awhile, but he’s figured it out now and it doesn’t work nearly as often. Your customers weren’t born yesterday either, so you should be straight with them. Give direct answers to direct questions even if those answers are negative and don’t patronize.

Encyclopedia Britannica, when you have content and you want people to pay you for it, ask them to pay for it. Or let them read a little of it, then pay for the rest of it. This has worked well for many, many websites. Do not pretend you are going to let someone read your content, then interrupt them, then pretend that you’re going to leave them alone and interrupt them again. You want an intrigued customer, not one who’s pissed off. Just a tip.

Posted in Grumbles