Dilemma
We recently had a situation that gave us pause to the way we communicate with our customers. After receiving numerous emails from our customers and fans in January, we decided to bring back the Free Match of the Month, starting in February. The Free Matches were a monthly streaming matches from our vast collection of submission wrestling videos that we provided with compliments from us to you.
As the name indicates, Free Match of the Month, means that whatever match is online for that month, it is free to view. Once the month ends, the videos reverts to a paid download. The program ran successfully in 2017, and we were very happy that everyone got to enjoy our monthly matches.
Each time a new free match is available, we announce them on our website and the link is left prominently on the homepage the entire month. In addition, we also announce the free match on our social media sites, and on emails, if we send them out that month.
A situation escalated recently when a customer emailed us requesting that we make certain past free matches viewable to him. He was not aware of them since we did not communicate with him via email. We explained that the matches are free for the month only, and once the month is over, the free viewing is gone. We further explained that the free match was advertised prominently on the homepage, as well as on various social media platforms as we found it to be more effective versus email.
We have always encouraged customers and fans to follow us on our various social media platform as we make certain content exclusive to those platforms. This practice is in line with many other businesses who harness social media as a way to engage with their consumers. We cannot be responsible for a customer who chose not be on social media, and complains about missing out.
We brought up an example by using Costco to the customer: Costco regularly provides free samples in their stores. If you were in the store that day, and they were serving free pigs-in-the-blanket, you may go help yourself to one. However, if you are not in the store, you probably won't be aware of what samples they are giving away that day.
You heard about the free pigs-in-the-blanket later and visits Costco the next day, but they are giving away mini quiches instead; and demands that Costco make their pigs-in-the-blanket available free to you because you did not know about their promotion yesterday and missed it.
In the end, we acquiesced to the customer's demand, and provided him with limited access to view the past matches. However, it also made us realised perhaps we could have done better in communicating the free matches, discounts etc. We had cut down on email communication, to limit to just once a month in order to be efficient and effective. Majority of the information has been communicated either directly on our website, and social social media. Short of calling directly, we really are at a loss as to how our customers and fans know what is going on at MovimusWrestling.com. If you missed a Flash Sale announcement because you did not check your email or receive an alert on your Twitter, does it become our responsibility to ensure you missed nothing?
We are sorry but given what transpired we have decided the best course of action with regards to the monthly free match is to discontinue it at the moment. It will continue to stream free till end of February. We hope to come up with a solution before then to ensure that everyone is aware of what is happening at MovimusWrestling.com.
