At what point does a customer become "unbundled?"

Last week, there was a story in Marketing Daily about “bundled services” from Internet Service Providers. Essentially, the story explained that the more services a customer has with an ISP, the less likely they are to move to another company. Click here for the full story.

Implications: This is not a new issue. I have written, recently, about the increasing tendency of banks to focus on “products per household,” as a means of retaining their clients; the more products a customer has with their primary bank, the less likely they are to change banks.

But this is different. The JD Power research cited by the article suggests that dissatisfied customers outnumber the incidents of customer attrition (among ISPs). Is that a sustainable situation? Where is the tipping point?

Bundling is supposed to increase sales for a company, and lead to greater convenience for their customers (one provider, one point of contact, etc.) But in this particular category, “bundling” could be leading to customers who stay with a provider in spite of the service or value received, rather than because of it.

Think about your most important customers—regardless of the business you’re in. Is your marketing model designed to simply to make it less convenient for customer to leave you? Or is you strategy founded on delivering value that would make them not want to?

Mike Anderson