Happy New Year everyone!

A few weeks before the December holidays, I logged into my email marketing tool to find a pink banner at the top stating: “Use of the marketing email tool has been suspended because your spam reports rate exceeds our acceptable thresholds. Marketing email access will stay locked for this account and this decision can't be appealed further. You can still continue to use other tools in the application and send 1:1 emails”. 

To say I was shocked was an understatement as:

• This meant I was left in a lurch with my business as suddenly I could no longer email my distribution list / community

• No warning had been given I was approaching a threshold

• I had been careful about who I was manually adding to my distribution list

• I had an email sign-up confirmation set-up on my website’s newsletter template to avoid spam sign-ups

• I was unaware there was no appeal process for free accounts before using this company’s product

I had been under the impression this brand was the Cadillac of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools which is why I hadn’t bothered to look too much into their customer support model before using it.  Boy was that a lesson learned given my customer experience below drove me straight to a competitor’s product.

The Short Version of my Customer Experience:

• “Hey, come use our product, we’re going to refrain from warning you the integration code we’ve provided can lead to us populating spam contacts in your email distribution list”

• “We’re going to avoid warning you you’re reaching a threshold and we’re about to turn your services off”

• “We’re going to shut your services off, Sales is going to provide incorrect information when you contact them, and you’re unable to talk to customer support or have the services back unless you pay us”

• “So it’s going to take six attempts on your part for multiple Community Managers in the forums to identify root cause of the threshold being breached”

• “And even if you pay us, there’s no guarantees you can have the email marketing services back, nor will we clarify the likelihood of your services being returned”

• “We will however continue to remind you, you can continue to use other tools in our application even though this information is unhelpful"

Sadly this CRM company seems to have lost sight of the customer experience nor did they even seem to realize they were sending me straight to a competitor.  Reflecting on the product or customer support you’re working on or responsible for: 

1. How much are the two items below driving your customers to the competition?

   • Product design

   • Customer support model

2. How much effort on average is a user willing to put in to get help vs. the effort it’s actually taking users to get help?

3. Why would a customer pay for your product if they can get the same functionality and better customer support elsewhere, for less than what you’re charging?

   • The paid account with the email marketing company was 5x what several other email marketing tools with the same functionality cost per month…can we say overpriced?

4. How much does your product design and customer support model align with what the company really cares about?

5. How clear are you being on what the user gets if they upgrade to a paid account or higher service?

6. How often does your customer support talk about other tools / features in the application besides the tool / feature the customer is having issues with and has contacted them about?

Besides driving me to a competitor, what do you think I have to say about this company’s product and support to other current and potential users?

Call to Action

• Using the comments feature, what's a product or customer support experience that drove you to switch to a competitor?

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About the Author: Rosanne Essiambre helps change agents and departments in one-on-one and group settings to be seen, be heard, and be effective in bringing about change in the organization and/or in their personal lives. She provides consulting and facilitation to organizations to improve communications and collaboration, smooth out the change / transformation journey, get to the root cause of an issue so it can be solved for good, improve processes, and implement successful lessons learned. And she conducts workshops, trains, and speaks on Energy Leadership, Emotional Intelligence, Resilience, Being a Change Agent and more. If you or your organization could use support with your change effort or some inspiration, contact Rosanne for a complimentary consultation. Rosanne is a Change Agent Coach, Facilitator, Six Sigma Black Belt, Change Management / Continuous Improvement Consultant, Speaker, and Energy Leadership Index Master Practitioner with more than 20 years experience working on a variety of transformations across a diverse set of industries both domestically and internationally, while continuously improving herself.