Why every business person should be familiar with “I am in Your Base Killing YOUR D00dz (dudes).”
Along with the AFL football joke “Such-and-Such has brought their own football today.” That line about D00dz never fails to raise a chuckle from me.
There is a story to here it is. Once in the dim dark ages of online video games (the late 90s early 00s), two people were playing one of those real time strategy games head to head. (one of the ones where you have to take over the map to win)
Player 1 asks player 2 where is he?
Player 2 responds with I am in Your Base Killing YOUR D00dz.
If you have no ‘D00dz’ it is hard to defend your base. And when you lose your base you lose the game. Obviously player 1 has not been paying attention.
There was a civility to this. Player 2 was kind enough to let Player 1 know they had messed up big time.
What has this got to do with my business?
Unfortunately the competition to your business will not be so generous. If they find a way to take your existing customers one by one off of you they are not going to tell you.
They will sit and take your customers until there are none left. And YOU ARE BROKE.
This can be stopped – the first step to this is awareness. You need to acknowledge you are losing customers even if the loss is small. Then you have a chance to stop the losses.
Customer satisfaction research conducted by Bain And Company found that 68% of customers left simply because they felt unappreciated. Which means you can cut your defection rate by a third just by making your existing customers feel welcome and appreciated.
I know it isn’t logical. Which makes sense – people aren’t logical, they are emotional. When they feel like a valued member of your community, they will forgive the odd mistake or bad experience in order to remain part of the community.
Creating that community through constant communication is one of the easiest and lowest cost way. Having a sense of community with your past present and future customers means your competition can’t start stealing your ‘D00dz.’