Can the word “free” ever be a negative?
Churn. It’s what keeps telecommunications providers up at night. With good reason. Few products are used as much and as often by consumers with an expectation of perfect performance—a clearly impossible standard to live up to. But at what point does a feeling that another provider can do it better lead to an actual change in providers?
Discovering the pain points among any existing customer base is critical to retaining market share. The words “free upgrade” would seem to be an automatic generator of goodwill. But the buzz on user forums, blogs and even tweets surfaced a profound dissatisfaction with the service contract extension required for free equipment upgrades. Consumers felt it was not directly addressed and hidden within the offer. Analysis of this unstructured data, combined with traditional call center notes and customer satisfaction surveys led to a simple, more direct disclosure of terms and greater overall retention of customers.
Now the upgrade is seen as a benefit of being a long-term customer, rather than a way to keep you one against your will.