The subscription rift

Clever people will easy deduce which game I'm talking about, but this is really not different from others.

I bought a game, new MMO title, with the expressed intention of trying it out with a friend. Explore a little, see what it does well and what it doesn't. It was already late when I decided to install the disk. So I'd just install, maybe let the updates run that probably needed to roll in, while I'd check my mails before going to sleep. Of course in the process of installing you also get told to make an account, entering your key from the booklet. which allows you to play a month for free.

Of course I did not get to play the next day or the day after. In fact life happened and over a month later I finally get a couple hours where I think now would be a good time to try this game. Guess what happened.



I was unable to login. First I thought that was a connection problem, maybe a patch? Restarted my entire machine, checked the connection, no all was perfectly fine. Then it dawned on me. I logged in to the customer account management and saw my subscription was done.

To put this into perspective: I have paid a substantial amount of money for just the game and a month free time. What I got in return is a coaster. I can't play the game because it's an MMO, online only.

Now some are outraged and some say "yeah, that's how it works idiot". True, there is fault in me, but seriously, my time started ticking down the moment I entered the key? I have had my month of free play and not even created a character. So tables turned, where is the sense in that?

The solution is so simple. The time starts running at the moment the first created character is placed in the world. Even if I create one, as long as I don't enter the world, my time wont start ticking down. If I have a continuous subscription, it just keeps on ticking after that of course. But say I stop. Then I go on holidays, for 2 months and come back to play again. When I paid my subscription, it wont start running, until I actually logged in again with my character.

This is just such a fantastic example of expectation management on a customer basis. The customer expects to be screwed over, for the company to work in the most moneygrubbing way they possibly can come up with. But if the company reacts unexpected in a way positive for the customer, then that's a customer that will stay for a long time and tell others about it.

I visited a lecture this spring with a guy that helps people with their businesses, to make them more unique, to make them memorable and stick out with a lot more than just another financial adviser or another proof reader. His ideas and principles are mostly just relevant for small businesses, but there is a lot of food for thought in it too. One of the first things he did was ask the audience what happened the last time they were truly happy with an interaction between them and a company? The usual answers where that they had a problem and the company solved it, either faster, better or less complicated than the customer expected. Let me stress that fact: They expected to have to jump through a million hops and then maybe get a lame old model replacement for their defective toaster, after waiting a few months for it. Instead they got instantly a new one, even a better model for their trouble and it took no time at all. The actual interaction had been a great positive surprise in opposition to what they thought would happen. Their expectation was exceeded by far.

You might have read of expectation management and this is it's own thing worth a post all by itself, on so many different layers, but let's just bring it to a close on this one. With very small changes, you can change the experience of your customers into surprises of the pleasant kind, where you by far exceed the expectation. This should be a standard way of thinking. What can be done, with just minor adjustments to exceed the expectation that has been laid out? I'm certain you can find seven ways before breakfast.

The way you work with subscriptions, is only one of them.