Everyone likes free — Except the business
As far as prices go in 2022, the price of a gallon of gasoline is probably most prominent in individuals’ minds. With over 250 million registered cars, this impacts most people. Meanwhile, there are some stories about some stations that are giving steep discounts to some customers and even a few giving away free gasoline.
A skeptical individual might simply see it as a marketing ploy, and an optimistic one might see it as a way of repaying loyal customers and engendering more loyalty. In these cases, “buying” that loyalty has a cost.
Doing business with customers… for “free”
There are other businesses that have a model for giving away their product for “free”.
Take, for instance, consumer banking. There are many banks that give away deposit accounts for free. Sometimes there are stipulations, occasionally it is truly ‘free’. They’ll even strive to make the banking customer experience positive to retain that business and even take actions such as refunding ATM fees. All a part of the cost of doing business with customers…for ‘free’.
In both of these situations, there is still money that will ultimately change hands, and there may be long-term visions of profitability even with steep discounts. However, consider the business that doesn’t intend to ever charge the customer…ever. Consider that email provider that offers free email for life or the search engine that finds and categorizes all content for you to find what you need on the internet. As most people know, in these cases the customer is also the product.
The “customers” will be tracked and segmented and that information will be turned over to other companies that would like to market or advertise to specific audiences. In some cases, that information will collect details that most of us would blush at or might be incorrect as jokingly referenced here.
Some might contend this trade-off of data for access is acceptable, others might say it is not a worthy barter. This will likely be debated for some time to come in the digital space, but at the same time, many of us have rarely received a survey from a CEM software about these ‘free’ services to understand our experience in the customer journey.
Taking It Back Old School
One of the original “free product” offers is over-the-air radio. The first radio commercial goes back 100 years. On August 22, 1922, a New York City radio station, WEAF, began selling time for “toll broadcasting” with a 15-minute Ad offering apartments. That was the first radio commercial. This was nearly 20 years before the first television advertisement (1941) and 72 years before the first internet banner ad (1994).
This is 100 years of giving away entertainment for “free”. Unlike the digital tools of today, there was not an easy way to measure who was “the best”. There have been radio rating tools around since the late 1920’s as that measuring stick.
However, many find the numbers unreliable for many reasons as discussed here. Some broadcasters then look at other measurements to understand loyalty such as digital engagement or subscriptions to a loyalty program – these will give a radio station a means to trend their own performance internally. Yet even as unreliable, it is still the measuring stick in the absence of another universal way.
This happens in the voice of the customer programs as well. The customer experience survey will depend on the CX enterprise software platform to often capture a key performance indicator that is just “widely accepted”. It will then be reported broadly and compared against others in the industry. Like radio ratings, companies proceed to offer incentives to improve the number, and while many of the activities improve the overall experience, there are some that hinder the customer experience.
We often hear about these stories in the automotive industry. What does that mean for the number? How does this affect loyalty? If we never hear anything bad about the experience, there will be no customer feedback loop to improve experiences. It is one of those quandaries that we face: the customer experience is important so we measure it, important enough that we offer incentives, and pressure to get those incentives results in people “gaming” the score, then the score does not really represent loyalty. Even with a terrific tool like QuestionPro’s exclusive NPS+ that can help one understand Root Cause and Churn Risk, the computations become unreliable.
How do you fix that? There are several approaches to help get more reliable and accurate scores in your Customer Experience program – adjusting who gets measured and when they get surveyed (which can also be supported by our QuestionPro CX workflow).
In short, giving a small taste of your product can be a win-win for both the company and the customer. Companies get to make their customer happy, thereby more loyal and engaged with the company – which means more capital. Similarly, the customer gets something for free, and if they like the product or service, then they proceed to purchase it.
Just keep in mind that just because you give free stuff in your company doesn’t mean that’s all you have to do to earn a loyal customer. Yes, you have started a sales relationship with your client, but no human being is perfect. Even your most loyal customer, incentivized just by regular free goodies, will effectively become tired of terrible customer service or the poor lack of great user experience in your app or website, for instance. Customers will get fed up because, apart from providing overused rewards, discounts, or freebies, they simply don’t like the experience they’re having with your brand.
Remember, no matter how much free stuff you’re giving away to your customers if you don’t ask them if they’re actually enjoying your brand. Or better yet, having the best experience with your product.
Register for our free CX webinar Ratings vs Engagement: Building Real Loyalty. Join us live tomorrow, April 27th at 11:00 AM CT as we speak with radio hosts and station managers Scott Steele and Brady Hull about numbers, loyalty, and engagement – and how these lessons can help you build a more efficient customer experience strategy.
