Piaras Kelly PR - Public Relations in Ireland

A customer is the most important visitor on our premises. He is not dependant on us – we are dependent on him

Meteor is a mobile phone company in Ireland. One of their biggest selling points is that their customers get to send free text (SMS) messages until 2008. Text messaging is huge in Ireland, so this is really appealing. Of course the catch is that you can only send free texts to other Meteor customers. Obviously enough, Meteor is hoping that couples, families and other other groups will switch over together in order to take advantage of the offer.

The thing is, there are plenty of people like me out there who wouldn’t switch over to Meteor because I don’t make enough calls to their customers and don’t think much of their coverage. But that doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t be tempted. What if I got some added bonus for getting a friend to sign up with me?

What Meteor should be doing is creating some sort of pyramid scheme, offering their customers bonuses for every customer they sign up, and perhaps even another smaller bonus for new customers they sign up. I’m sure their are a couple of legal issues there, but every service provider should operate a similar model.

Think past the loyalty card. If your customers aren’t coming back to you time and time again, then you’re doing something wrong. You should be so confident in your product that you want to transform your customers into your salesforce. If a customer and four of his friends come to your sandwich store, you should let that customer eat for free. Sure you can stick with the loyalty card scheme as well, but look at which one will be more popular.

In this age of Consumer Generated Media, people like myself keep preaching about the impact of what your customers are saying. The modern consumer has a bigger disposable income and is looking from a better experience from life, but has less time to enjoy it. We’re turning to tools like Google to get unbiased opinions on products and services. It’s in a company’s best interests to get their customers talking about them.

One of the best ways to do this is offer some kind of reward. For example, a trip to the dentist’s is expensive in Ireland. If my dentist offered me a discount for every customer I sent his way, I’d be less likely to shop around. I already have a good relationship with my dentist so it’s in his interest to build upon it. I would recommend him to my peers normally, but with some sort of reward system in place, I’d be much more proactive about it.

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