The Retention Specialist S01 Ep 01 [Une Pilote, Le Pilotini]
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‘WAAAAAAHAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHOOOOOOWAAAAAAA-’ went the klaxon. It sounded exactly like a klaxon that hadn’t done much klaxoning in a long time.
A small fat man, not unlike a binge-eating rodent, ran as fast as he could, his necktie flapping hilariously against his face. Skidding past a very important door (which was marked ‘important person inside’ ), he skittered in a strenuous 360 and stood, all sweats and necktie and whiskers, in front of the door.
In his hand was a half-crumpled piece of paper.
He persuaded his tie to behave itself, then knocked smartly on the very important door.
The door swung open, and a very important man’s silhouette tumbled onto the doorway. His importance was punctuated by the sheer sharpness of his shoulder pads.
‘What,’ he asked importantly. A man so important, his questions did not need to be accompanied by question marks.
Our harassed rodent wordlessly passed the moist paper to the important man.
The man swore colorfully. He said something quite British, like ‘Gordon Bennett,’ or ‘fecking plonker.’
He towered over our rodent fella, who flinched, looking even more rodent-y than ever.
‘Fetch me The Retention Specialist,’ growled the very important man.
And thus was the very fragile TGIF spirit bruised very nastily indeed.
‘The key to good mechanicking is to not mechanic at all,’ said Y Johnson, his chin dripping sweat as he explained to his young apprentice the fundamental principles of replacing dead spark plugs.
‘Yes sir,’ said the small boy with a big nose.
‘The best way to drive a car is by not driving at all. Take a bus, ride a horse, take the bloody Uber — driving should be your last option, every time!’
‘Indeed, sir.’
‘But imagine for a second that, against your better judgment, you find yourself weighed down by one of these mechanical brutes — ‘ ferocious kick to hubcap, then inevitable wince — ‘you’re gonna wanna fix the thing, right? Which is why you have to have spanners.
‘Usually you prod the suspicious parts of the vehicle like so’ — and he poked gingerly at the gearbox with a spanner, then experimentally at the pigeonhole. ‘I find that if I try these things for a while, I get frustrated enough to call for a local mechanic.’
‘Brilliant, sir.’
‘Why, yes. Have you been noting these crucial tips?’
‘On my moleskin sir!’
‘Good lad!’
The phone was ringing.
‘You are speaking to Y Johnson, The Retention Specialist, Lead Requalifier, Enemy of Churn and Absolute Badass of Badagry. How may I help you? Uhun. Ah, I see. Eyah. Uhun. Indeed. You know my fees…’
The small boy with the big nose watched with utter fascination. TRS was being contracted again. Maybe this time, if he was a good lad, he would be allowed to come along!
‘Right. Give me 24 hours.’
Clink.
Y Johnson squinted at the boy.
‘Call an Uber. We have work to do.’
I must have died and gone to Tinapa, the boy said in the innermost corners of his astonishingly cuboid mind.
The briefing happened on the ride to the target location. Y Johnson had had to first download the confidential documents mailed to him from The Important Man of ThickeWood Corp. There was a lot of data, mostly acquisition data, most of which Y Johnson did not care about. He had had to recreate the acquisition path, however, so he could see the specific points in the funnel customers were coming to touch the ThickeWood. Depending on the intent and channel peculiarities, he quickly split the customers into groups, called Cold ThickeWood and Hot ThickeWood. As a precaution, he created a residual bucket of people who bounced and decided to call them hard ThickeWood, after ‘hard bounces.’ This was, of course, because something about bounce behavior might tell him what made it likely for weakly converted people to churn eventually.
There was only one name in the file. Client Baleen, he was code-named. Of course, thought Y Johnson. The Whale! The most important client.
According to these documents, at approximately 16:24, Friday September 9, 2016, The Whale had churned.
ThickeWood had just lost its biggest customer. Naturally, the company’s staus was pegged at DEFCON 2 and Y Johnson, The Retention Specialist, had to be summoned.
And so there he was, bumping along the buttock-attacking roads of Obalende.
‘Do you know what churn is?’ he asked the boy.
‘ The churn rate, also known as the rate of attrition, is the percentage of subscribers to a service who discontinue their subscriptions to that service within a given time period. For a company to expand its clientele, its growth rate, as measured by the number of new customers, must exceed its churn rate,’ said the boy with the nose.
‘Wow,’ said Y Johnson. ‘You just copied Investopedia word for word, right down to the words in bold.’
The boy was shy.
‘Churn is normal. That’s what people say. As long as your acquisition rate is greater than the churn, your business will grow. Simple math. But what happens if you’re a company like ThickeWood, with a single client whose transactions accounts for 65% of its GMV? Screw acquisition. Retain that bastard, is what I say!’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Be careful with the case.’
The boy cradled the small suede briefcase Y Johnson had given him before they had departed.
The Uber delivered its passengers to their destination, which was a very quaint house in the recesses of what one might very generously acquiesce to as being part of Ikoyi.
The time read 20:17.
Man and boy stole across the lawn, with the moon and trees for alibis.
Inside the house, a middle-aged man snored peacefully. However, there was nothing peaceful about his snores. A rat loitered by the doorway, attempting to make a dash across the length of the wall, but whenever the man’s thunderous snores started, it ran pell mell in the direction from which it was coming. It had lived in this house four years, yet it was still terrified of the nasal blasts.
A hand pressed gently but firmly against the man’s neck and abruptly injected him with a long, evil looking syringe.
‘Umfmbllll?’ the man started awake.
‘Relax,’ said the Retention specialist. ‘How are you doing? Ah,where is the electricity in this place? Shall my boy make you tea?’
‘What the hell are you — ?’
‘I told you to relax, didn’t I? Agitation only accelerates the virus.’
‘VIRUS!?!’
‘Oh, yes. Just a smidgen, I assure you, but this particular strain, I was assured, is quite the prolific bastar-’
The man was on top of Y Johnson, strangling him.
‘I don’t know who you are, or how you came here, but tell the Man Upstairs I said hello!’
‘Eurkh….you…kill…me…and…you…never….get….antidote….!’
‘It’s true!’ said the big-nosed boy hurriedly. He was perched all that time at the window. The man was only just noticing him. His grip slackened. Y Johnson took advantage of this moment to place a good kick right in the dual eggs of productivity.
‘Right in the prick! Have you no honor?’ this, from the man, as he toppled over, clutching his family treasures.
Clearing his throat to test that it still worked, Y Johnson walked over to him and began in a strangled voice:
‘Right. You are Mr. Beluga? Former client to ThickeWood?’
Whimper. Affirmative.
‘You discontinued your account and stopped using ThickeWood as your service dedicated provider. Why?’
Squirm. ‘Better service….competition gives one-on-one massages.’
‘Hm. I see.’ Y Johnson scribbled in jotter. Note to ThickeWood: review and upgrade USP in light of competition’s new strategy.
‘Alright, then. Here’s what you are going to do: you are going to reactivate your account and continue to use ThickeWood.’
‘Why would I want to do that?’
‘Because of the virus.’
‘Ah. The virus.’
‘Indeed, the virus.’
‘Indeed.’
‘It will kill you in 24 hours. Maybe before that. I don’t know; I am no biologist.’ Y Johnson retrieved a vial from his jacket pocket, waving it tantalizingly in the air.
‘This,’ he said, ‘is the antidote. It will give you an extra day of life. Take one every day and you won’t have to die. Well, you might die (I have no call to be making promises of immortality) but it won’t be because of my cute little virus here.’
‘I don’t believe you. How do I know I even have a virus?’
Y Johnson replaced his syringe in the ‘case and handed it over to the boy. ‘You don’t need to. If you are alive in 24 hours, you would have realized what a liar I am. If you are dead, well. Whoops.
‘Call me,’ he said, and flung a card at the man’s face.
The man and the boy departed the same way they had come.
It took 29 minutes before Mr.Beluga reactivated his account with ThickeWood. It took another four before ThickeWood transferred Y Johnson’s retention fee.
‘Customer, my dear boy, has been retained,’ he said, then lit a cigarette.
‘Very well done, sir!’
- end
