A colleague forwarded me a deck from a marketing presentation. It included this comment about keeping your existing customers.

Most customers leave because they simply feel you don’t care enough about them or their business.

A few months ago I called GEICO to put a car on my policy, and after taking care of business the phone rep went to incredible lengths to tell me how much she cared about me and how important I was to her personally. I wondered if I was supposed to ask her out or something.

Has this “we care about you” stuff gone a little too far?

I don’t really need all these people to care about me. I want their products to be safe and accurate, to sell at a fair price and to meet my needs. Whether the telemarketing rep sounds like she has genuine concern for me as a person is entirely irrelevant.

Back when I was an editor I recall long conversations about relevance and meeting the felt needs of our subscribers. I had always considered those “needs” to be things like “accurate information that helps me comply with government regulation.” (That’s the business we were in.)

It never occurred to me that they needed me to have a warm, fuzzy feeling about them.

So, can I please revise the statement above? How about this?

Most customers leave because your product is no longer relevant to them or their business.