Constant Contact Obviously Doesn’t Care What Its Customers Say
Remember this blog post from about seven months ago, the one about Constant Contact constantly contacting me? Well now I’m trying to cancel my Constant Contact account, and I can’t unless I do it by phone… and I’ve been on hold for about a half an hour now.
What makes this even funnier is that a blogger complained about this four years ago, and Constant Contact doesn’t seem to be listening. You would think a marketer that deals with communication would be on the lookout for bad things being said about it, and strive to make customer-centric changes.
Or maybe they are listening - when I wrote the initial blog post, someone from Constant Contact left me a direct message on Twitter. They might as well have put a flier on my car’s windshield, because at least then I would have seen the note before throwing it out.
Why am I canceling? I decided to experiment with an e-mail newsletter for a high school football blog I write. The question was, would a weekly e-newsletter help lift page views, and it didn’t. And for that matter, not very many people registered during the season, even though the newsletter contained some exclusive content.
Long story short, it wasn’t worth the time and effort, or $15 a month.
Once I was finally connected to a call center representative, the process was short and sweet and they didn’t try to con me into staying (then again, I haven’t checked my e-mail… and I have been unsubscribing from Constant Contact e-newsletters that randomly show up in my inbox for the past seven months).
But now that I look at this review, I wonder how long they are going to take to cancel my account, and keep taking my money. I guess I’m going to have to keep an eye on my credit card statement.
Was Constant Contact easy to use? Yes. Would I recommend it to anyone who was looking to do a small newsletter? Probably not. On the business end, the company doesn’t seem to be very customer-centric. And the fact that they don’t follow their own do-not-e-mail rules and send correspondence to people who have opted out of receiving e-mails kind of bothered me:
Please be reminded that your opt-outs (unsubscribe requests) via Constant Contact never expire. Federal law requires that you honor all opt-out requests indefinitely, regardless of future mailing platforms, unless you receive a new explicit opt-in request for that address.
March 18th, 2010 at 10:20 am
Dear Tim,
First, let start off by apologizing for your cancellation experience, prior miscommunications and not finding the product and service is of value to you. I could make excuses why there were internal failures regarding your account, but you are 100% right, that from your perspective (the most important one) that we failed you on multiple levels.
We do pride ourselves on being a listening, customer centric company, and that is the reason we ask our customers to call in for a cancellation. We want to understand why our product or service did not meet your needs or realize the value for your situation. By speaking with the customer, not asking for robotic drop down box information, we can better feed our product and service strategies to correct the flaws.
I hear your current concerns, and would like to help, please let me know if any of these options are acceptable.
1. Option 1:
a. Ensure all further email communication from Constant Contact or Constant Contact customers ceases immediately.
b. We will credit your account back for the following months: March, February and January, which seems to be when started using the service less consistently.
2. Option 2:
a. Ensure all further email communication from Constant Contact or Constant Contact customers ceases immediately.
b. We do consider ourselves best practice providers in this marketing communications space. If you are still passionate about writing your high school football blog, and would be open to our assistance in helping to achieve your goals in this endeavor, we would like to offer you our services.
c. If you choose to go down this path, we will offer you 3 future months of no charge service and the availability of our entire staff’s knowledge or time.
Like I said earlier, we would really like to help you out in this manner. If you would like to move forward, my contact information is listed below. (Just a note, I will be out of the office on Friday, March 19th to visit my family in NJ since my sister is expecting…Yeah!)
My best regards,
Michael Pace
Director of Customer Support
mpace@constantcontact.com
P: 339.222.5988
C: 781.308.1389
Twitter: @mpace101
March 18th, 2010 at 11:08 am
We tried Constant Contact for a brief period of time. We didn’t have any problems with their customer service department. The trouble we experienced was their zero-tolerance policy regarding unsubscribes/spam complaints. Our e-mail list consists of customers and opt-ins only, we do not spam. We have used Vertical Response for a year now and are very pleased with the results.
March 22nd, 2010 at 5:01 pm
Michael,
It’s kind of awkward that you’re begging me to stay on board with you guys in front of the entire Big Fat Marketing Blog audience. Plus I don’t think you read what I wrote: E-mail marketing did not work for me. The only problem I had with the service was 1) being placed on new mailing lists after I had opted out of the old once and 2) Having to call a customer service rep when I could have just canceled my service online.