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You Will Buy From Us!

Oscar Foulkes June 14, 2013 Uncategorized No comments

Being in the marketing and sales arena myself, I find it intriguing how companies address the issue of getting their customers to buy (or enticing people to become customers in the first place). I received the letter below from a large courier company, with whom I opened an account some time ago. However, I never got around to using it, because at the same time I’d been using Citisprint for some stuff, and ended up using them more and more, because their rates are good, service efficient and friendly. You get the picture.

So, at a time when a charm offensive might actually be more effective, this is the letter I got from the Large Courier Company:

To whom it may concern

We are attempting to address an issue previously communicated with yourself regarding the zero trade on your account.

We at XXXXXXX would like to assist you as we realize you have not billed with us for a period of 6 months and longer. We have an alternate arrangement that might benefit you with your current needs in terms of a once off shipment that your company might be sending every so often. We have drop boxes situated at selected Pick n Pay and Caltex Freshstop stores in Cape Town for your convenience.

From an administrative point of view I am confident that you will understand our needs in terms of the closing of an inactive account as it becomes a tedious administrative issue. We have and always will appreciate your business partnership with us and will always be available to meet your needs once again when your business has the necessity to do so. In the interim the accounts will be closed off so as to simplify our procedures from an administrative point of view this decision is measured by the fact that for consecutive month periods there was no activity on your account.

Thanks for your understanding.

This is a prime example of the Accounts/Admin tail wagging the dog. An account with zero transactions cannot possibly cost you anything to maintain. Goodbye, Large Courier Company.

(Oh, by the way, you do know my name, because I filled in a multi-page document that extracted reams of personal information. Addressing me “To Whom It May Concern” is proof enough that I am better off without you).

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