Customer loyalty goes both ways

I've written how many companies overlook and end up screwing over their long-term repeat customers.

Last week another large business screwed over my account.

They decided to raise their prices and cut 75% of what features of my plan had. I had the option to pay 50% more for 1/4 of what I had or pay 4x to get the same plan I had.

No increase in value.

No improvement in service.

Just "pay us a lot more money".

Customer loyalty goes both ways. Customers are loyal to you if you're continuing to provide value at a fair price. Remove value or hiking the price too much on them and you're not being loyal to them. They'll leave and likely complain.

Likely this company won't see the lost loyalty for months. By the time they notice, they'll just whine about how no one is loyal anymore and never understand that they abandoned their long-term customers first.

But there's an upside to this.

If you're a company that treats customers with respect, does the right things for them, and works to keep their loyalty then you can attract those defecting customers. Word will get around that you honor your promises and once you earn their loyalty, they'll stick around.

To track those customers, watch what your competitors do. When you see them misstep, watch your cohort reports (like in my app). You might see the new customer bump and then the symptoms of customer loyalty (e.g. repeat orders, low latency time in-between orders).

Eric Davis