Customers Don’t Always Like Surprise Gifts

I received a surprise in the mail today – a women’s magazine I don’t subscribe to. But, according to the address label, I’m going to be getting the magazine for a full year. Three words come to mind: Gift. Horse. Mouth.

Has this ever happened to you?

I called the magazine to see if there was an error and they explained that I was getting one year free as a result of something I bought online. It was coming from some kind of clearinghouse.

Odd. I asked for them to end the free subscription since I didn’t have an interest in the magazine and didn’t want to waste paper. They removed me from their mailing list and promotional list. Glad that was done.

I’m using this story to remind you that not all surprises are good ones. Customers don’t like surprises. In this example I had to go out of my way and wait on hold for over 10 minutes just to cancel something I didn’t order and didn’t want.

Now, some customers may well have appreciated a free magazine subscription but a better approach would have been to have offer customers the option of receiving the gift up-front with a complete explanation of what obligations, if any, may come tied to the gift.

3 ways you may be unwittingly surprising your customers (and causing them to leave)

• Are customers surprised when they get a bill? An insurance company I worked with said that many times customers were surprised once they got a first bill, even though they knew how much their annual premium was. Bills are an opportunity to communicate (clearly) and even remove buyer’s remorse.

• Are your customers surprised if they are on a yearly contract and you auto renew them (this is a bad practice if you don’t notify customers first – Microsoft pulled this on me recently and I wasn’t able to get a refund when they assumed I wanted to auto renew). Talk about bad word of mouth and making enemies quickly.

• How about your contracts. Is your contract language a surprise? I’ve worked with companies that are really nice and friendly to customers and then hand you a creepy legal document full of impenetrable legal-ese. Sure, you may need to protect yourself in the contract by using accurate legal terminology but there are ways to use more understandable language today. Also don't hide things in the small print because that leaves the customer with a queasy feeling that you may be hiding something. So why not explain it in plain ol’ English to the customer? If anything, that’ll clear up confusion and minimize future misunderstandings (and lawsuits).