```json
{
    "title": "The Customer Investment",
    "url": "https://performancezen.com/2012/01/24/the-customer-investment/",
    "datePublished": "2012-01-24",
    "dateModified": "2012-01-24",
    "language": "en-US",
    "description": "Who uses the products or services your company sells? The usual answer, once you get through the marketing spin and positioning, is customers. Companies spend a large amount of time,…",
    "author": "spierzchala",
    "publisher": "Performance Zen"
}
```

# The Customer Investment

Who uses the products or services your company sells?
The usual answer, once you get through the marketing spin and positioning, is *customers*.
Companies spend a large amount of time, resources, and treasure converting *prospects* into *customers*, but where is the investment in keeping *customers* from becoming *anti-customers*?
The mobile phone business is an ideal example for this ebb and flow, a prime case study for customer investment.
I'm a [T-Mobile USA](http://www.t-mobile.com/) customer; have been since 2004. This year, T-Mobile USA has decided that *[2012 Is The Year T-Mobile Fixes Churn](http://www.tmonews.com/2012/01/t-mobiles-2012-is-the-year-t-mobile-fixes-churn-plan/)*. Does this mean just the customers at the end of their contract or the one leaving because of the lack of the iDevice they want?
Or will T-Mobile USA extend this churn-loss plan (Go New Year's Resolution!) **proactively** to all customers.
Will T-Mobile bother to personally contact (hey, with a *phone call*?) every one of its current customers?
Will T-Mobile ask customers who are leaving why? Not in a stupid, aggressive way, but in a way that admits that they didn't do enough for that person, but they really want to understand what went wrong.
Will T-Mobile USA take the time to invest in their customers?
Investing in customers means proactively working with them to ensure that the service they are getting:

 Meets the customer's current needs
 Is flexible enough to adjust to the evolution of the customer's business.

 
[Joseph Michelli](http://josephmichelli.com/) discusses the concepts of *service velocity* and *service recovery* in *[The Zappos Experience](http://amzn.to/x4Zqez)*. These are items that companies need to consider. Customers want you to adapt and evolve to meet their post-sales needs (*service velocity*) and then be truthful, upfront, and solution-focused when there is a problem (*service recovery*). Customers want you to invest in them, in sickness and in health.
It's so much easier to keep a customer than it is to get a new one to replace them. So why are so many companies lacking focus and discipline when investing in their customers.