Making a Long-term Commitment to Supporting Your Customer

We talk a lot about the importance of providing great customer service, not just because it’s the right thing to do (it is!), but because we want our first-time customers to remain our customers in the future.

But to build that loyalty, we must understand that a long-term commitment is a two-way street. In order for our customers to want to continue working with us, we must be prepared to support them month after month, year after year—even if it’s been a while since our last interaction (or their last purchase).

This tweet is a great example of a company staying committed to its customer, decades after the customer’s purchase of the now-broken product.

My ancient Super Nintendo went POP and died, so on a whim I called the support number on the back just to see what would happen.

A nice lady from @NintendoAmerica spent 10 minutes with me troubleshooting possible causes. On a nearly 30-year old system. pic.twitter.com/glQCH7cwR1

— nathantolbert (@nathantolbert) March 30, 2018

The Nintendo customer service representative was ultimately unable to provide a fix, but the time she spent providing advice is still so impressive.

Nintendo has millions of customers – and many dozens of products newer than the Super Nintendo gaming system. That representative didn’t have to spend 10 minutes on the phone trying to help, but she did, and that act helped to further boost Nintendo’s reputation for customer service (of which there are many other positive examples online).

To the extent that we can support customers of older products and services, we absolutely should encourage our support teams to spend that time doing so, as the Nintendo representative did.

At one point, those old products were the latest ones we had, and they were the ones we were the most excited and proudest to release. We should be eager to support the people now who supported us way back then. It’s the right thing to do, and such dedication to your customers will pay long-term dividends.