6 Incentives To Offer To Unhappy Customers

Customer support reps often believe that there are no backdoors when it comes to luring unhappy customers if they are unsatisfied with the product. However, this belief is incorrect to a very large extent. The customer bought your product in the first place because he liked your product and now you need to use the same product with added incentives to make him stay.

Hear this one out. After hearing raving reviews about a restaurant, I decide to explore the food there. I’m floored by its vast choices on the menu and tasted all my favorite dishes. I love the food, the service and decide to make this my go-to restaurant. However, on my third visit there, I had a bad food experience and voiced my feedback to the manager. Now the manager had two choices, either to let me go or use the same food (I have been raving about) to lure me back again. He obviously chose the latter option and offered me a free dessert that changed my attitude towards the bad food experience.

Now as a marketer or a sales person, you can use many incentives to lure your customer back to your product. However, your offer should not only be related to your product but should also be suitable for the buying cycle.

Here are six incentives that you can offer with your product to unhappy customers.

1. Offer Extra Reward Points/Cash

Let’s say you have a reward system for your product. So whenever the customer uses the product, he receives points/cash in his virtual wallet. Use this reward system as an incentive when your customer feels unhappy about the product.

You are a credit card company and your customer sends a bad service experience feedback to you when your rep was not able to solve his payment issue. Now how can you win your customer back? Tell him you are crediting extra reward points in his card that may be used for any service payment. Voilà, you have a happy customer again.

2. Offer Bonus Upgrade On Trial Basis

It is simple, just offer an upgrade that can solve the issue the customer is facing but offer that upgrade as a trial version. So when the customer starts liking the upgrade, he will pay for the paid version. However, make the trial period long enough and ensure it provides real value even if not continued.

Let’s take the example of a CRM – your customer is unhappy with your email marketing plugin. Now this plugin issue can be solved if the customer gets an email upgrade but he doesn’t want to pay. So you offer him the 2-month trial version, and within few days into the trial period, he realizes how effective the upgrade is and opts for the full version.

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3. Offer Discount On Next Purchase

When it comes to incentives, discounts always work like magic. Just say you will provide a discount on the next purchase and see how fast your customers get happy.

You are in the online shopping business and your customer bought a shirt that had fitting issues. Give him the same shirt with exact fitting and offer a discount on his next purchase. He will most likely be a consistent repeat customer.

4. Offer Free Product

Give away free product(s). Need I say more. Let’s take the same shopping business example – now your customer not only had fitting issues but the shirt was a defective piece too. So how will you turn this bad experience around in your favor? Offer to replace the shirt with a fresh new undamaged piece plus offer another shirt for free.

5. Offer Additional Samples

Everyone likes surprises and customers like them even better. In case your customers are unhappy with your product for quite sometimes then send additional samples as a surprise whenever possible.

Let’s use the CRM example again – your customer is facing issues with your email marketing plugin where his emails keep bouncing back and his free email package is consumed. Send him a free email package for a different plugin or a free trial of a different email plugin.

6. Offer to Pay for the Related Product

You have a product that requires regular upgrades but they come at a price. Offer to pay for those upgrades for a limited period to your customers. Again, you have a CRM that requires customers to buy regular upgrades for it to function well for various plugins. Offer to give these upgrades for free for up to 3-4 months and see how happy your customers will be.

So now that we know what type of incentive will make the customers happy, it’s time to use them in the best case scenario possible. And you can see how smoothly you can make your customers happy about the product by offering the best value-adding incentive.

Related Blog: Customer churn: 7 easy ways to reduce it