What usually happens when you decide to stop using a service? You might email your service provider to tell them you’re going and that’s often it. No one waving goodbye to a valuable customer. No one saying how sorry they are to see you go. That’s what’s happened to me in the past, when I’ve changed banks, cancelled a credit card or stopped buying contact lenses from the shop on the high street.

But when I tried to change phone suppliers recently, something very different  – refreshingly different – happened. We’d decided to move from one broadband provider to another, moving everything to the same company from whom we were already getting our phone service. We needed a larger broadband facility and they came up with a good package that was better than just upgrading the broadband with the existing supplier, Zen Internet.

When I contacted Zen to tell them we were leaving, the chap I spoke to (no automated cancellation service there!) sounded quite sorry that we were going. He politely asked me why, so I explained the situation. “Did you know that we provide phone lines and calls too?” he enquired. Actually I didn’t! I thought they only provide broadband. “Would you like me to tell you what prices we can offer you?” he suggested. Since their broadband service has always been faultless, I thought it was worth considering what they could offer. And the package came back cheaper than the deal I had planned to move to! So after checking a few details, I called back and spoke to the same person, to give him the go ahead to switch the service. As we were going through the details, he told me that actually the price would be even cheaper, because he could put us onto some better packages than he previously thought. The result is that we now have way more broadband facility than we’ll ever need, a reliable service, hassle free call packages and all for a bill quite a bit less than we were paying.

The nice folk at Zen have obviously put some thought into what happens when a customer tries to leave. They’re not pushy, they’re just concerned about why you’re leaving; and they’ll do what they can to see how else they can help. The whole process has been smooth and painless. Not only have they kept a customer, they’ve created an even happier customer who is now telling the world about it!

What do you do when one of your customers tries to leave? Do you have a process for handling it, or do you just let them disappear to one of your competitors?