Reply To: Native Instruments Christmas Season Deals, Sales €/$25 Voucher Code

[peter]

On Kirean said

I truly wonder why it’s so hard to appreciate your customers and truly build loyalty by treating them with even minimal respect instead of throwing rocks at them?

Sometimes it’s truly baffling that companies seem to be actively trying to get rid of the customers that have injected money into their business on a consistent basis, instead of you know, keeping them around for future as well…

Of course, all within reason. I don’t think the consumer should be able to ‘black mail’ or guilt trip with their transactions, but if someone has kept buying your old and new stuff, I’d figure “losing” a few bucks is worth keeping their continued business instead of alienating them off completely.

I have to respectively disagree that NI is disrespectful to their customers. Unless you’re referring to something else beyond the vouchers, I don’t see any basis to consider NI’s vouchers which offer $25 off on regular priced items to be an affront to customers. It’s really just a way to purchase items you want that aren’t on sale, which I’ve done with it in the past. Sure, I’d prefer something like a $10 US voucher on ANY PURCHASE over say $50 US, but I don’t think there’s any reason to take offense.

I’ve been an NI customer since their early days and through the ownership changes, and I’ve found that they’ve been a consistently good company to deal with.  I’ve found the upgrade pricing is a superb value that reflects strong loyalty to their customers. Contrast that Toontrack that forever pulled away upgrade pricing for their flagship product, Superior Drummer for 2.0 customers if they didn’t act within a specified timeframe to upgrade to the latest version. So now those customers must pay the full price to upgrade to SD 3 as if they didn’t own the previous version. Even more of a slap in the face, Toontrack offers reduced pricing for customer of ANY ezDrummer version to upgrade to SD 3. Thatt’s really problematic and incredibly customer disloyal. So, while I own SD 3 and think it’s the best acoustic drum ecosystem there is — and I’m even friends with one of their competitors (Steven Slate) — I don’t have a lot of love for Toontrack’s treatment of customers and wish a competitor like XLN — which treats their customers very well — would displace them.

Most companies tend to over focus on acquiring new customers and don’t spend enough effort retaining and rewarding their existing customer base. I’ve never found NI to have fallen into that trap.

If you want to find some really sleazy practices in this business with promotions — and this violates FTC regulations –look at the trickery that Karanyi engages in by inflating its prices and then issuing customer loyalty vouchers.  If NI did that, I would say they’re engaging in sham promotional tactics, which is what Karanyi keeps doing. I’m a customer, but I don’t find these practices okay and I will always call out such practices here on LM.

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