While watching The Office (TV Show) I recalled a sales tactic I had previously blogged about. This sales term when translated from English to Hebrew somehow gets lost in translation. The sales term is customer retention…
Let me explain.
In the TV show The Office ( shown on NBC) Ryan ( the temp working in a sales office) was quizzing Michael Scott ( the boss) on commonly known business terms and tactics. He asked Michael “which is more cost effective to sign up a new client, or to retain a current one.” To which Michael Scott answers, “ um, neither - it a trick question.”
Ryan responds “ To keep an existing client is 10 times more cost effective than signing up a new one.”
A few weeks ago I broke away from Israel’s greatest telecommunications tyrant. I discontinued my services with Orange (Partner communications). Even though I still have 2 years left on my contract with them, I decided to cut my losses and I notified them that I would not be using their services. Orange told me that there would be all sorts of insane penalties for “breaking their contract”. Even after being made aware of the penalties I still wanted to cancel. Simply put, I was tired of being taken advantage of. After hours of fighting, they told me to hold off canceling for a bit. They would have someone from customer retention speak with me to see if they could keep me as a customer.
Being a telesales professional, I have to admit that I was a bit excited to speak with this sales magician. In my personal case, where someone is willing to pay insane amounts of money in order to leave Orange telecommunications death grip there is little you can do. What could Orange possibly have up their sleeve? What could this retention agent possibly do to morph me back into a satisfied customer?
I asked Orange how long it would be until I receive a call from this customer retention magician. She replied, “It will take between 24 - 48 hours until they will contact you.” Now that threw me off a bit, are there that many people looking to cancel their accounts that Orange needs to wait two full days? I forgot about this concerning matter with hopes that this “agent” would have some special potion that would make things all better.
I doubted anything could be done as Orange had already done the despicable. Orange decided to increase my bill 18.75% without notifying me. I was routinely checking over my bill and noticed that the bill had been significantly higher then any previous bills. I called them up to complain, but was met with a simple, “ True we changed your fee rate, but the plan you had was too cheap - we had no choice”. After fighting with them for days it was clear to me that I would not be getting my old plan back and this new more expensive plan was my only option.
That’s how I got myself into this whole migela. Of all the people in the world to take advantage of, Zev Hecht is not one of them. Getting back to the story at hand, I am sitting - waiting - holding my breath for Orange to get back to me…
Meanwhile, I contact Cellcom to find out what kind of a plan they can offer. After 96 hours of waiting Orange responds with their “counter offer” in order to keep me as a client. They offer me a plan that is actually more expensive than my current plan. But that’s not all, in order for me to take this more expensive plan, I would actually have to sign a new 3 year contract with Orange. After explaining to their retention department that the current plan I had was actually cheaper than their “ special plan” they seemed downright stumped. They ridiculed the other providers, explain to me that only they could give me proper service. They even threatened me.
I switched to Cellcom a week ago and have been happy since.
Apparently in Israel - signing on a new customer and keeping an old one, well who cares. Lets just eat some shwarma…
