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Killing Kindness

Very interesting story about loaning iPads to help save a print newspaper:

 Hussman, whose newspaper has distributed 27,000 iPads in the project, is encouraged by the results so far, with an over-all subscriber retention rate of 78 percent. The Democrat-Gazette is nearly done converting the Little Rock area, delivering a print newspaper only once a week – on Sundays – while lending subscribers an iPad for free so they can read a daily replica edition. As Hussman loses a modest fraction of his subscribers, he is banking on the idea that those who remain will be fully engaged. He is determined to “smother these people with customer service,” to truly move from ad-revenue dependency to a focus on the readers.

 Particularly love the idea of smothering with customer service. It reminds me of is a local business that performs some pretty mundane services for me. They are hardly the only game in town, but the customer experience they deliver would be the envy of much bigger and better organizations. Not surprising that many of my neighbors have switched to them over the last couple of years. A great example of small town goodness giving the big bad corporation a run for their money.

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