Actually, our opinion does matter.

[Plane Sailing]

Hey, no offence taken! I thought it was funny!

Cheers

 

[Ourph]

Customer retention is vital. Washing your hands of an ex-customer and saying 'good riddance' isn't a pathway to success for most organisations.

But customer "retention" is not the same thing as winning back an ex-customer. Keeping your current customers happy is a winning strategy. Changing your product to appeal to ex-customers in a way that may piss off your current customers, probably not so much.

 

[13garth13]

But customer "retention" is not the same thing as winning back an ex-customer. Keeping your current customers happy is a winning strategy. Changing your product to appeal to ex-customers in a way that may piss off your current customers, probably not so much.

But (just for fun, a bit of a thought exercise), WHY exactly did these people who once upon a time consumed your products (voraciously in some cases), become "ex-customers"? Perhaps, it would behoove said business to consider its practices so as to not generate such ill feelings that create said ex-customers, in other words to do some pre-emptive customer retention for the future.

Put another way, if this business had been interested in customer "retention" in the first place, to the degree to which Plane Sailing describes it at his current place of employment, perhaps they might not be taking as many (in some cases senseless and ill-placed, but in other cases perfectly legit) potshots on the intrawebs as they are now...

Cheers,
Colin

 

[TheUltramark]

Warning: the following post contains a ginormous generalization, and a completely fictitious scenario

If Your Corp. designed, manufactured, and sold revethaw's, and you only made and sold red ones, and every year you moved about 100,000 units. You decide to switch up, plenty of customer feedback states thata change would do the company good. You make the bold decision to switch to blue revethaws.

About 10,000 of the red revethaws lovers are completely heartbroken, and cannot find themselves to buy the new blue ones.

Despite this, you move 250,000 units of the new product.

Now, let's assume that it is extremely cost prohibitive to manufacture both red and blue, it has to be one or other....which would you go with?

 

[Dice4Hire]

Warning: the following post contains a ginormous generalization, and a completely fictitious scenario

If Your Corp. designed, manufactured, and sold revethaw's, and you only made and sold red ones, and every year you moved about 100,000 units. You decide to switch up, plenty of customer feedback states thata change would do the company good. You make the bold decision to switch to blue revethaws.

About 10,000 of the red revethaws lovers are completely heartbroken, and cannot find themselves to buy the new blue ones.

Despite this, you move 250,000 units of the new product.

Now, let's assume that it is extremely cost prohibitive to manufacture both red and blue, it has to be one or other....which would you go with?

First, I would buy a better metaphor.

 

[Ourph]

Put another way, if this business had been interested in customer "retention" in the first place, to the degree to which Plane Sailing describes it at his current place of employment, perhaps they might not be taking as many (in some cases senseless and ill-placed, but in other cases perfectly legit) potshots on the intrawebs as they are now...

All I can tell you is that WotC lost my business with 3e and won it back with 4e; which pretty much proves my point. Every move WotC makes to bring ex-customers (like me) back, loses other customers (like people who enjoyed 3e and moved to Pathfinder).

 

[13garth13]

All I can tell you is that WotC lost my business with 3e and won it back with 4e; which pretty much proves my point. Every move WotC makes to bring ex-customers (like me) back, loses other customers (like people who enjoyed 3e and moved to Pathfinder).

Keeping your current customers happy is a winning strategy. Changing your product to appeal to ex-customers in a way that may piss off your current customers, probably not so much.

So, you actually do agree then that WOTC is not engaged in a winning strategy (and was additionally not using good business strategy when they created 4th Edition, thereby appealing to ex-customers such as yourself and irritating certain current customers such as myself)?!

Cheers,
Colin

 

[13garth13]

Warning: the following post contains a ginormous generalization, and a completely fictitious scenario

If Your Corp. designed, manufactured, and sold revethaw's, and you only made and sold red ones, and every year you moved about 100,000 units. You decide to switch up, plenty of customer feedback states thata change would do the company good. You make the bold decision to switch to blue revethaws.

About 10,000 of the red revethaws lovers are completely heartbroken, and cannot find themselves to buy the new blue ones.

Despite this, you move 250,000 units of the new product.

Now, let's assume that it is extremely cost prohibitive to manufacture both red and blue, it has to be one or other....which would you go with?

Well, as lovely as this analogy is , it does then require one to ascertain as to whether, in fact, they have gone from only selling a mere 100 000 units to 2.5 times that amount.....and while no-one except the bean-counters at WOTC/Hasbro know for certain what the revenue streams are, WOTC's recent actions over the last four or five months don't seem to point towards a product selling such a whopping volume of product in comparison to the sales amounts of the previous model.

So, while it is certainly a good point (hell, if they can more than double their revenue with the blue revethaws, then more power to them), I'm really not convinced at all (quite the opposite in fact) that in reality the blue model is really kicking butt quite so much as much as was anticipated.....

Cheers,
Colin

 

[TheUltramark]

Well, as lovely as this analogy is , it does then require one to ascertain as to whether, in fact, they have gone from only selling a mere 100 000 units to 2.5 times that amount.....and while no-one except the bean-counters at WOTC/Hasbro know for certain what the revenue streams are, WOTC's recent actions over the last four or five months don't seem to point towards a product selling such a whopping volume of product in comparison to the sales amounts of the previous model.

So, while it is certainly a good point (hell, if they can more than double their revenue with the blue revethaws, then more power to them), I'm really not convinced at all (quite the opposite in fact) that in reality the blue model is really kicking butt quite so much as much as was anticipated.....

Cheers,
Colin

I totally hear ya
I have no idea what sold where and for how many to when.
it could very well be true that 4e has underperformed, and undersold 3e, howtheheck would I know?

 

[Ourph]

So, you actually do agree then that WOTC is not engaged in a winning strategy (and was additionally not using good business strategy when they created 4th Edition, thereby appealing to ex-customers such as yourself and irritating certain current customers such as myself)?!

Cheers,
Colin

1) I don't know if WotC is engaged in a winning strategy or not. I don't have acess to that information.
2) I think choosing to radically redesign 3e D&D simply to appeal to lost customers like myself would have been a poor strategy for WotC. As far as I am aware, that was not the motivation behind 4e.
3) Even if they made a poor choice by releasing 4e (for whatever reasons), I do not believe that making another poor choice (attempting to win back old customers at the expense of current customers) is a smart solution. History cannot be rewritten... two wrongs don't make a right... etc.