Customer Service and Self Interest

I just received an email from the Financial Times informing me that I needed to update my credit card details to maintain my subscription. Simple enough, I thought. Ah, maybe not. The directions in the email had me click on a link and told me to update the credit card details. Unfortunately, nothing on the page mentioned credit cards. So I figured that I might try updating the account information. Fair enough, it seemed right, although I had to remember the answer to one of the security questions rather than just providing my password. (I wondered how many legitimate people were screened out and if the company ran into any poseurs.) Then I looked and there was still nothing saying credit card, though there was a link for payment details. Ah-hah! Success. This time.

But I've seen this problem many times before. A company will email a customer, asking for updated information or instructing them to do one thing or another, and then the instructions turn out to be wrong. Strategy is important, but companies gain and lose customers on the details. Those customers are rarely interested in the strategic directions. They want things done when they need them done. If a company isn't going to spend the short amount of time ensuring that instructions actually correspond to reality, then it's going to find that some number of people walk away because of frustration. This is unnecessary and it's far more expensive than the small amount of time needed to do thing correctly. A good proof reading would cost all of maybe $50, and a single subscription in this case is worth over $200 annually. A little attention to details is profitable, indeed.