For the most part, customers are patient. They will put up with bad service, arrogant attitudes, and the endless ways businesses think up inconveniences for the customers in the name of "work processes." They will tolerate it because it's more painful and inconvenient for them to break in a new service provider, at first. Then when they've had it, they will leave, forever. And they will tell a whole lot of people about the departure as well as the repeated incidences of abuse and neglect.
On the average, businesses lose 50 percent of its customers every five years. They depart silently. Oh, they may have tried to get your attention for some time, but you couldn't hear that. In every complaint or criticism came the opportunity to reconnect, stuff your ego and innovate around changing needs. If you thought of complaints as negative, then the only thing you may hear is the sound of feet as they leave.
Bain & Company, a global management consulting firm, recently conducted a survey of U.S. corporation and reported on this state of customer satisfaction. Silence is your warning signal. This is not an on/off switch. Here's the good news--it's a volume control. As you hear things going away or getting more distant, that is the time to act.
What is this gap between your good intentions and your actual performance? How did this happen? What needs to happen before you are totally beyond saving? Most companies are kidding themselves and blowing smoke about their "customer-centric" devotion. Read and learn: Closing the delivery gap: How to achieve true customer-led growth.
What are you going to do about this? What about the account that is getting smaller or stagnating and the same level, order after order? Why is that relationship not growing?
How many ways, in person, on the phone, through your web site, are your encouraging customers to let down their hair and tell you want you need to do to clean up your act? How many ways do you act on that information and get back to them to tell them what a difference they made?
Get out from behind that computer screen, ditch the electronic surveys and feedback forms. Remember what it's like to have a live dialog, where you are completely open and eager to get to the core of their angst with you and into the real pain and struggle in their business, so you can find or provide solutions.
Chances are good you are going to lose that 50% just by being a good business. If you are breaking most of the rules of customership and loyalty, then your churn rate might go higher. Frankly, that's exhausting and expensive to acquire customers. Finding and winning new customers is 7 to 10 times greater than keeping the customers you have. Folks, that's real money that comes right out of profits, then your savings.
Frederick Reichheld, author of Loyalty Rules!, argues that loyalty is still the fuel that drives financial success - even, and perhaps especially, in today’s volatile, high-speed economy - but that most organizations are running on empty.
How do you think you would score on the customer loyalty meter? Ask your customers the same question and really listen. What you may hear, if you are really lucky, is what you must do to excite and engage them more. You want to hear that--not the sound of feet.
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