Keeping Customers: Part 2 -
Relationship Building

A low-key non-relationship with customers may be okay if you're a monopoly like the local telco or power company—but not if you're an ISP.

by Jason Zigmont HowToSell.net [September 17, 1999]

As an ISP, you have to deal with churn. Churn is the number of users that terminate service with you on a monthly basis. Most ISPs admit to a churn rate of 2 to 3 percent per month—or between 25 and 33 percent per year! If your churn rate is typical, then, you've got to bring in more than 2 percent of new business every month just to stay in the same place! To actually grow your business, you need to do significantly more!

In last week's column, Quality of Service, we discussed improving your overall service as a strategy for keeping customers, but today we'll take a look at ways to lower your churn rate by cultivating an active relationship with subscribers.

Special content
One key to lowering your churn is to offer services or content that your users can only get from your ISPs. Many ISPs have taken the first step in this, which is to localize their home page. A number of services, such as Planet Direct, Snap!, and LookSmart make this fairly simple by providing cookie-cutter local content that ISPs can use.

Tip: Never look on the content as a moneymaker. You may, in fact, manage to work out an add split with the provider, but this is not the point. The content is there as a service to users; any extra revenue it provides is a bonus.

Great as localized content is, I never recommend putting it on your index page. Local content has a way of taking over the page, and new users coming there to sign up often have to spend considerable time hunting around amid the local content before finding your subscription form . (While I always recommend against this, it is possible to do it right. Telco and ISP SNET is one company that managed it nicely.)

A better idea is a 'Members Only' section. This can house local content, plus many other things that users will find useful. Members Only sections can and should include items such as; a member's forum, specials or coupons, a user web ring, a system update page, and any other information you feel you can give to your users. I've seen ISPs post employee bios, employee of the month features, pictures, and many other little items that give the ISP a personal feel. Subscribers love it!

Communicate regularly
Another way to maintain a relationahip with subscribers—one that's met with a high level of success—is to publish a newsletter, either via e-mail or via postal mail. E-mail is of course cheaper, but you can easily put a print newsletter in with your invoices and have a much better impact with your users. A number of companies, of which Incogneto [ed. note: site no longer exists] is one, can make this even easier by providing semi-customized content.

When all is said and done, the bottom line is to be creative. For example, one time I organized a customer-appreciation party. It was held at a local Cyber Café—which was one of our customers. The local radio station (another of our customers) sent some folks over. The customers absolutely loved it!

Your in service,
Jason Zigmont

—End

read Part 1 of Jason Zigmont's Keeping Customers