Blogroll
15 Jun 10 Customer Lock-in is lame, go for Customer Loyalty
There is often talk of “customer lock-in” or “switching costs” in entrepreneurial circles, basically implying that it should be hard for a customer to change supplier from your business to someone else’s. In IT, this is every day stuff, in my consultancy work I even came across an enterprise software vendor once who refused to be helpful in integrating other software with their software, because making my client knowledgeable about their API’s was, and I quote, “not their strategy”.
I feel the concept of customer lock-in to be outdated and counterproductive. Do you really want to have customers who may be slightly disgruntled and are sticking with you mostly out of necessity? Even if it might be profitable in the short term, it doesn’t seem like good long-term business sense to me..
I’d rather have customers who are delighted with my business, who are eager to tell others about my services and products, who basically help me attract new customers due to the simple fact that I’ve made them happy.
Customer lock-in is lame and outdated, I’d rather strive for making my customers so delighted that they help evangelize my cause.
I would rather take customer loyalty based on satisfaction than customer lock-in based on necessity.
