It feels like I’m seeing it more and more. Why do companies offer shiny, sparkly, drool-worthy deals to brand new customers, and those of us who have stuck around for years get little more than “gee, thanks?”

I’ll admit, I’m bitter about my recent experience with my cable company, but it’s opened my eyes. For years at my house we’ve been putting up with crap like intermittent service during big games, a stubborn DVR box that works only when the stars are perfectly aligned, missed recordings because of “unknown technical difficulties” and only the rarest of opportunities to talk to a real human being when we need help. Not to mentioned we get absolutely zero monetary refunds to cover our emotional damages from getting so worked up. When we finally called to find out how we can get more for our money (and threaten to take it elsewhere), we were not-so-politely told deals like that are stubbornly reserved for new customers only. I didn’t feel so much shocked as I did betrayed.

I Would Like Some Cheese with My Whine, Please.

Alright, I’m just going to say it. What about me?

I’ve paid for their service for years, and even sent them business a couple times. I trusted them to give me the best quality possible, and haven’t cancelled our account when they’ve fallen short on their promises. And then when I so desperately need them to come through for me, they made me feel like I was two inches tall and not worth their time. #bigcompanyfail

It got me thinking how different big brand loyalty is from small brand loyalty. As part of Paste, I thought about how we try to make the most out of our users’ brand loyalty. Since we’re such a small company, we have every opportunity in the world to make each experience a positive one. Of course, it’s ideal that our users never get frustrated enough to contact us complaining, but if they do we want them to feel like their problem is the only one on our plate.

We’ve Done a Few Things Right.

I must say how awesome our users are. There are lots of reasons they e-mail us, but they’re almost always sure to give us feedback of both the positive and constructive variety.

This, for example:

“I adore Jumpchart and found it very useful indeed. I downgraded because I am a designer by trade and am not often involved in the IA of a site. If I need it again in the future however, I will definitely re-upgrade. I have also recommended Jumpchart to associates.

A couple of things that would make the tools more useful to me personally would be to have the ability to:

+ Add a header and footer to each page (with things like a search bar and registration sign-up elements)
+ Associate a design comp with each page

I hope this feedback is helpful and thanks very much for the wonderful service!”

(Full disclosure: When this user e-mailed us, we were in the middle of launching our newest features, which included design mockups, so she didn’t know about the goodness headed her way.)

That support e-mail validates for me that we’re doing something right in the brand loyalty department. That this user would come back to us instead of searching for something else speaks volumes toward the success our attention to customer service has seen. And I think as a big company you’re just not able to give each customer the attention they need to feel special. It’s one of the benefits of being the small guys.

But how did we do it?

We’ve made absolutely certain to respond quickly to all support inquiries. We do everything in our power to go above and beyond when answering questions about how a feature works. We’ve showered our users with gifts of free space, free memberships, and even some of these to show our appreciation for feedback and loyalty. But the most important thing to me is that we didn’t discriminate who we gave what to based on how long they’ve been a customer, or how much they’ve used our products.

We love our new customers, but we have our older customers to thank for being where we are today.