Hi,
Marketing departments talk about churn, namely a customer moving from one service provider to another.
The aim of marketing is of course to bring new customers into the fold, but it most often ignores incentives to keep existing customers. So we get the often ridiculous situation of companies spending marketing money and customer numbers being static because as many customers are leaving as are arriving. It's called the leaky bucket.
How do you attract new customers? You offer them special deals, special rates, 6 months at half-price, 1 month free and so on. All stuff that costs TPG money. WHat incentives do you offer to keep existing customers from leaving? Most times nothing or worse. Leave them on more expensive, outdated plans while new customers pay less for the same services. Only "upgrade" them if they ask.
How is it that highly paid management types don't understand customer relations 101: The general estimate is it costs 5 times more to get a new customer than to retain an existing customer. Unless of course the cost of email services is more than 1/5th of the marketting budget in which case I might be wrong.
It's called mastering retention if anyone cares.
TPG HAD a significant, largely invisible incentive to keep long-standing customers from leaving; included email and web services. Sure it cost something, but it provided a huge incentive to stay with TPG for long-term customers that used TPG's email services for personal email.
Anyway, I will port my email to the messaging company to give me time to change my email address on the 60-odd places (that I have recorded or remebered) including my bank, insurance companies, club memberships vendors and so on. I will not enjoy doing this, but my TPG email isn't safe at TMC.. Read the terms and conditions.
When I've finished doing that I will ask TPG what possible incentive there is for me to remain an existing customer.
