Poor CRM Strategy Example

Recently I watched a commercial for DirecTV. The first 20 seconds of the 30 second commercial was about how you’re forced to pay for channels to you don’t want. The commercial was focused on the idea that when you pay high prices for your cable, you’re being forced to pay for channels you have no desire to watch – which is unfair to you, the consumer. “Okay” I said to myself.

That’s true. I don’t have any desire to watch several of the channels I’m being forced to pay for. I have hundreds of channels I don’t want, and only 15 or so I do.

It seems they really understand their customer. The idea was quite tempting – perhaps DirecTV was going to allow me to pick and choose the channels I want to pay for, which would mean I save money while watching the shows I want to watch… Nope. The end of the commercial, which unfortunately I’m struggling to find online, goes something like this: “No company can let you pick and choose your channels.

So go with DirecTV, where you get 500 channels for $XX.XX.”

Essentially, the commercial spends over 70% of its spot telling me I shouldn’t have to pay for channels I don’t want, only to say at the end “but since you do, go with us, where you have to pay for even more channels you don’t want.”

It’s unclear what message DirecTV was trying to send to its customer, and it’s possible that the commercial is effective at drawing customers in that don’t critically think about the advertisements they’re watching. But from a customer relationship standpoint, most of the potential clients they receive from this commercial are going to start out disappointed – believing they have the ability to get a feature they don’t receive. This is a great example of a bad way to start a customer relationship.

While it’s possible the company still turns a profit from this commercial, it’s hard to believe that any CRM research was conducted to see if this commercial was a good idea. It seems more likely the company invested in this commercial without performing the right research necessary to ensure this was a good strategy. Maybe it turns out to be profitable, maybe it doesn’t, but I have a hard time believing that they conducted any customer research on this marketing idea.