You don't do that by insulting long time customers who aren't in danger of dying anytime soon.
I understand that long time customers are not all dying. But I guarantee you that they are not showing up as frequently, nor are their average bills keeping up with inflation. It’s just the way demographic shifts happen.
But if a company doesn’t get ahead of this early…it will turn on them quickly.
I understand what they were trying to do. Many places have been doing this. My brother runs a commercial painting company that contracts with companies like CB to do the renovations. He has been booked for the past two years doing these types of things.
That said, marketing companies need to study what happened here. Someone missed some key things—and social media destroyed them.
I used to run a pretty sophisticated “Voice of the Customer” program for our company. We were able to adjust a big service delivery operation to target very measured, specific needs. When I would give lectures on this, there was a point in the middle of the process where your would “think” you knew the answers. But if you don’t confirm them, you will get burned. I saw it happen over and over.
Marketing agencies don’t always “do the work.” Companies don’t always want to spend the money to “do the work.” That’s why you get lousy marketing, horrible service, and management that speaks to their customers like they are idiots.