Selling Water continued

If you read the letter we sent to Poland Springs posted below, you may be wondering how Poland Springs responded. Anyone with sales experience will tell you that it is far easier to keep an existing customer than to develop a new customer. It is also a matter of sales fact, that happy customers will sometimes tell people about their satisfaction with a vendor's service or product. Sometimes a happy customer will even provide a reference. The unhappy customer, on-the-other-hand, will tell everyone about their bad experience. Everyone.

No doubt this is a human trait with Neanderthal roots. It is not at all important that you know I have found the most comfortable spot in the cave for sleeping. It is, however, critical that you do not drink the nasty water I found and more important still, that you tell me if you come across any nasty water.

Good news; you don't need. Bad news; you need.

Just like TV.

Back to Poland Springs...

We enjoyed good service and good water from Poland Springs for years. Did we write about it? No. Blog about it? No. Pay for it? Yes.

Why are you reading about our experience with Nestle Waters Poland Springs now? Bad service.

If I wrote about their good service, you wouldn't read it. Bad service, especially bad food service, you will read about. Understandably, yes?

The folks at Nestle Waters Poland Springs either don't care about dissatisfied customers or they have calculated the cost associated with having satisfied customers vs. the cost of keeping stupid customers who are willing to be treated like stupid customers.

There was a message from Nestle Waters Poland Springs in voicemail this afternoon. It was a computer generated automated "service call" confirmation.

Nestle Waters Poland Springs doesn't even try to keep unhappy customers and that can only mean one thing: They must have plenty of stupid customers.