5th Relationship Marketing Principle – Customer Relationships at Risk

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RElationship at risk We like to bang the blog about relationship marketing and the importance of customers. They are your lifeblood but they are often taken for granted.

The fifth of the five Relationship Marketing Principles is, “The second most crucial time is when the relationship is at risk.” The truth is, the relationship is always in danger.

There was a DirecTV dish on our house when we moved to California and, since I haven’t met a technology I don’t like, we became customers. They sent a nice welcome package and were very helpful during setup. The service functioned fine. After some time DirecTV started sending me direct mail telling me what an important customer I was.

Then we had some reception problems. The dish was attached to our cedar shake roof and winter storms were blowing it out of alignment. They sent out a service rep. who attempted to rectify the problem. The next storm blew it out of alignment again. They couldn’t come back for a week. I got out my ladder and tried to fix it myself. This also didn’t work. I wasn’t happy.

No effort was made by DirecTV to follow up on either the initial service call or subsequent requests. DirecTV didn’t check back with me to make sure my concern had been addressed. Apparently being one of their best customers doesn’t mean much. We switched to Comcast, which I will tell you all about shortly.

Hip Shots

If you plan your business around relationship marketing principles one through four you won’t need to worry too much about five.
If one of your best customers is at risk do something tangible to address their concern and make sure they know how much you value their business. Follow up to be sure the issue was resolved to their satisfaction.
Don’t assume the relationship has returned to what it was before. The customer’s interest has been heightened so they are now going to be more aware of what you say and do and more aware of what your competitors say and do. Remember, you probably don’t have 100% share of their requirements, so you need to work on rebuilding the connection with this best customer.