When I joined AT&T in the late 1990s, its legacy business – long distance phone service – was in decline. Email was replacing calls in the business world and fledgling wireless carriers were enticing residential subscribers to try cell phones with free long distance as a matter of course.
This posed an interesting challenge for management: How do you support customers on a product you know is ultimately going to disappear?
Spending money to improve the experience of a dying product could be seen as throwing good money after bad. At the same time, letting the experience associated with a “cash cow” business degrade too far could erode revenue faster than it already is. You might have to ramp up new revenue streams more quickly, and some legacy customers will be so frustrated they refuse to consider new offerings on principle.
Several people I’ve talked to recently face this dilemma in their organizations, so I thought I’d tap the collective wisdom of the community for ideas.
How do you think about balancing CX across old and new products in the throes of a major strategic shift?
If you’ve been through this before – what advice would you give peers knowing what worked (or didn’t!) for you?
