I am a dyed-in-the-wool Star Trek fan. The Next Generation was my clear favorite. I was not crazy about Voyager, but each of the other series up to and including Deep Space Nine was a regular watch. Last week, while watching an old episode of DS9, I was reminded of one of the most interesting aspects of watching the show. The multiple ‘cultures’ represented by various species were always sources of social insight.
One of my least favorite, but simultaneously a most fascinating species, were the Ferengi, the most acquisitive species in the universe. While watching this episode, Quark, owner of the space station bar scolded his brother and made him recite the First Law of Acquisition: “Once you have their money, never give it back.”
When I was in private practice, it was my goal to put myself out of business; that is, if I did my job well, I would help people enough so they did not need me anymore. They would get better and leave therapy. In order to stay in business, it was necessary to continually attract new clients. Accordingly, during my practice years, my marketing was always aimed at acquisition of new clients.
Here at SOS, we have always been of the belief that we should never give a customer a reason to want their money back. In fact, we have applied this Ferengi ‘law’ to getting and keeping customers . . . ‘once you have a customer, never let them go!’, just the opposite of my goal while doing a psychology practice.
We are excited to be marking twenty-seven years in business this month. We are even more pleased to realize that almost one-third of our current customers who have active support agreements have been SOS customers for more than twenty years. Thirty percent of those have maintained continuous support/update contracts since we initiated maintenance agreements in 1996.
While it is necessary for any business to attract new customers in order to stay healthy and to thrive, in the software world, it is just as important to keep customers by keeping them happy. We here at SOS are committed to doing that. Thanks to our current and long-term customers for sticking with us!
