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Saturday, January 20, 2024

When Slippage is Bad

Slippage is the practice of offering something - a discount coupon, a voucher for future service, a cup of coffee, etc. - knowing that a large percentage of the folks who qualify for the offer will never claim it. Typically, this is done by providing the offer as a gift card or voucher, because people misplace those all the time, or fail to use them within a year (which is a reasonable time for them to be valid).

Unfortunately, there seems to be a growing trend among some companies in the B2B space to offer something that they never intend to honor, at all, ever. 

Typically, they do this by emailing or posting a survey where they collect your data, but announce once they have it that you won't receive the reward because of some ridiculous excuse. Here are a couple examples which you should never, ever do:

Don't offer a gift card for answering questions and then not give it to the folks who respond.

Don't offer a reward for completing a task and - after the respondent does whatever you've asked them to - refuse to provide the reward by saying the promotion expired. If it expired, you should have stopped taking entries.

Both of these practices turn your company's customer champions into enemies. They will never come back. And they will tell everyone they know... forever.

Have you come across similar swindles? Please feel free to share them in the comments.

When Slippage is Bad

Slippage is the practice of offering something - a discount coupon, a voucher for future service, a cup of coffee, etc. - knowing that a lar...