Here at the Customer Service Blog we
usually deal with the question of how to get your customers to be more loyal.
But sometimes a business will face the opposite problem. How do you deal with
the situation where demand for your product unexpectedly exceeds supply? How do
you satisfy the spike in demand, without upsetting your existing loyal customer
base?
This is an issue I had to face a few
years ago when I was the Marketing Director of a health food company. One of
our niche products suddenly came to public attention after being endorsed by a
well-known celebrity. Within days, the whole national media had jumped onto the
bandwagon, and we were securing full-page articles in almost every national
newspaper, and interviews on national radio and TV.
The upshot was a trebling in demand
for the product within two weeks. Up until that point, whenever a health food
shop or mail order customer called us, we could fulfil their order with 24
hours. But all of a sudden we were faced with a shortage of supply, a massive
number of new customers, and also a smaller group of existing loyal customers
who were miffed that they could no longer receive instant next-day delivery of
the product.
This leads me (bizarrely) onto the
subject of football. In particular, the football team I have loyally supported
myself for over 40 years: Lincoln City FC.
Lincoln City (who are nicknamed the
Imps) are currently a non-league team, playing in the fifth tier of English
football. The last five years have been cruel to the Imps. The Club lost its
Football League status in 2011 and since then, they have struggled both on the
field of play, and also financially.
Things got so bad a few years ago,
that the Club’s bank (The Co-operative Bank) refused to keep them as a
customer, and the Club was forced to make an agreement to pay off its debts to
the Bank before looking for a new bank to do business with.
But all this changed 9 months ago. The
Club took on a new management team who have been extremely successful. The Imps
currently sit right at the top of their division, and have a very good chance
of being promoted back into the Football League this season. Average
attendances have doubled, and money is flowing back into the Club.
But there is a problem. In the FA Cup,
the Imps have been drawn to play against several large Championship and
Premiership Teams, and the demand for tickets for these games has far
outstripped supply. Most recently, the Imps made footballing history by becoming
the first non-league team in over 100 years to reach the Quarter Finals of the
FA Cup. They were drawn to play away against Arsenal, one of the biggest clubs
in England.
Lincoln City were given 9,000 tickets
for their supporters (in a stadium with a capacity of 60,000). You would think
that this would be more than enough tickets to satisfy demand, considering that
last season some of the Imps’ home games were drawing attendances as low as
2,000.
But you’d be wrong. The Imps have
become a victim of their own success. Even 9,000 tickets was not enough to
satisfy demand, and inevitably, a lot of fans were left disappointed.
The Club attempted to prioritise their
most loyal customers by allocating tickets first to season ticket holders and
people who had purchased other advanced ticket packages. But this didn’t take
account of other loyal supporters who, for whatever reason, were unable to get
onto the priority list.
I am myself a case in point. I live a
160 mile round-journey from Lincoln, so I am unable to attend every single
game. So buying a season ticket didn’t make sense for me personally.
But I do go to most games, and I have
done so for around 40 years. Considering that in most of those four decades I
have lived a long way from Lincoln, I think I can be counted as one of the
Club’s most loyal fans!
Fortunately, I have a very good friend
living in Lincoln who got a ticket for me, so I was able to enjoy the historic
occasion of seeing my beloved Lincoln City play against Arsenal.
But social media is now awash with
hundreds of angry fans who are complaining bitterly that they weren’t able to
get tickets for the Arsenal match. And many of them are complaining (with some
justification) that many people who are ‘new’ supporters, managed to obtain
tickets for the Arsenal game, even though numerous loyal fans couldn’t get
tickets for the game.
In any business context, it is a
nightmare scenario if you upset your long-standing loyal customers by denying
them a product or service, while allowing new customers to have access to the
same product or service.
It's worth taking a look at my blog
article dated 08.07.16 discussing the research work of Reinartz and Kumar at
Harvard University, where customers were divided into four distinct categories:
'True Friends', 'Butterflies', 'Strangers', and 'Barnacles'.
But what could Lincoln City have done
differently? And what can the football club learn for the future? This is a
question I will answer in Part 2 of this blog article.
.............................................................
Darren Bugg is a marketing and
customer service expert with 30 years’ experience working in this field. He
holds a Masters Degree in Marketing and Innovation, in which he specialised in
the subject of customer loyalty. His new book ‘The Loyalty Gap - the 7 Secrets
of Customer Loyalty’ will be published later this year.
To see hundreds more articles visit our archive by clicking here
To see hundreds more articles visit our archive by clicking here