Customer Retention?

One of my students pointed this (a bit old at 2006) video out in his undergraduate dissertation to me, and I must admit, given my frequent adventures in Customer Service, I'm astonished at the lengths this AOL salesman goes to.



Weirdly the video and experience itself has become a meme on Youtube with The Rock and Christian Bale (very rude, but very funny) parodies, and there seems now a whole host of videos on Youtube of people cancelling their accounts, credit cards and so forth now, showing clearly the sometimes outrageous blocks put in their way.



I'm not sure I have a point here, certainly on the one side, you could argue, that the salespeople at least tried every possible thing they could to retain that customer and stop them leaving the company. On the other hand, the sort of negative publicity this in-itself could bring.... Is it worth it?

Would I give the guys at the other ends of the phone medals for their services to Customer Retention? Or the sack for going over-the-top? And especially when you impliment sales targets and retention bonuses to motivate salespeople (I know of at least a couple of companies where if a customer comes on the phone to cancel and you persuade them to not cancel, you get a cash bonus) is this what you end up with?