Jananas

As a customer (and a business person) I understand that a portion of what I pay for goods and services is profit for the company. I’m okay with this. What I’m not okay with is increasing prices and decreasing services & service levels being used to support poor business decisions and the resulting operational inefficiencies. This goes back to the story I told about my high school administration; if I can see what’s wrong, don’t expect me to sit back and willingly accept poor treatment.

Recently Rogers closed the majority of the Rogers Video stores (reasons behind this and the way in which employees are treated are a whole separate issue). There was one reasonably close to my house. I have friends who rented movies regularly. They went one day and the store was just closed. No warning, no retention effort, nothing. Instead they walked the extra block and went to Blockbuster.

The Rogers Video stores were closed because they weren’t profitable. That’s fine. But just because the retail location or store concept isn’t profitable doesn’t mean that individual customers who went to that particular store are also not profitable. And if there is a way to keep the revenue from those customers in house (and for that matter, to not send them directly into the arms of the competition) why wouldn’t you take it?

The retention offer could be as simple as a coupon offering two free video on demand movies. It’s a substitute product with extra convenience. Plus it’s a way to potentially get customers using a new product (and one that doesn’t require retail locations and additional staff). And really it would have shown the customers who used those stores that Rogers valued them as customers. If video rental customers are also cable, internet, wireless, or home phone customers than this goodwill may have spilled over into other silos within the business. Instead, the customers were ignored and a chance to retain them fell by the wayside.

When I can see opportunities to retain customers and revenue ignored or projects mismanaged, I get mad. I get mad because I’m expected to pay for these mistakes. The counter may be that due to the oligopoly that exists in the telecommunications market (i.e. that there aren’t enough companies for perfect competition to truly exist), I don’t have a choice to punish companies for poor management choices by taking my money elsewhere. If my choices are Rogers, Bell, and Telus – then do I really have a choice at all?