Janet Lee Johnson | The Art of Marketing

I got a response yesterday afternoon from my rants about HighBeam Research. I thought it deserved to be posted here for everyone, as I felt the response was prompt and fair. And this is a little lesson to marketers, Steve found my posts via RSS. Are you listening for mentions of your company and its products?

Here’s Steve’s response, unedited (I left off his direct line phone number, that’s it):

Janet,

I recently read your tweets and blog post about our service.  I am disappointed to read that we have not provided you with the experience that you expected.

I believe that your blog post makes some very good points, and you have pointed out some areas in our communication that need to be tightened up.  We try to be up front with our customers, and your post has pointed out some areas where we can improve.

There are two reasons for the apparent inconsistency:

-          Over the past year we have nearly doubled the content on the site, and in the past 5 years we have gone from about 15 Million total articles to 68 Million articles from over 5,000 sources.  We are offering ever more value to users, and because of this, we have recently made the decision to increase our price. We notify all annual customers about their renewal price, and we offer a very simple cancellation process if they do not wish to continue.  Though we are a small company, we offer an 800 number that is staffed 24/7, as well as on-site cancellation that is easy to find and available at any time.  While our 800 number communication could be better, if you do get billed, the 800 number does appear next to our charge on your credit card statement.

-          We do offer a “stay and save” offer for our customers, as is common in the industry.  As you know, the cost of retaining a customer is much lower than the cost of finding a new customer, so, we offer the lower price here to help retain users.  I think the insight to draw from your experience is that it has the appearance of being inequitable and we can improve that.  We appreciate your comments, and will be working on this area in the immediate future.

We are working to make some improvements to our communications for all of our customers.  I think that our service is still an incredible bargain relative to the offerings of our competitors and we are hopeful that you will reconsider us in the future when you have a research need.

Thank you
Steve Weir
…………………………………………………….
Steven R. Weir
Director of Subscription Marketing
HighBeam Research, Inc.

I asked Steve if he’d mind me doing this, and he gave me permission to do so. He also noted that he’d let me know when they’re able to synch all of their systems to be consistent. End of rant.