So I admit it, Im a fickle customer. Life is too short and there are too many alternatives to stay with a service or company that doesnt meet or exceed our needs. The internet makes it exceedingly easy to find and engage competitors in the time it can take to cancel an existing service. So how can companies successfully retain unsatisfied and frustrated customers? Knoweldge, Engagement, and Reengagement
1. Knowledge
1.1 Know your product: First thing you have to understand is the product or service you are defending. Low cost, low emotional value type products and services are very hard to defend except by the most basic price/convenience equations. In contrast, more complex, expensive, and sticky products and services require deep consideration to weigh the options and repercussions of cancelling. Understanding these elements is the first step to understanding how to save your customers.
1.2. Know your Customer: As much as you can, develop insights into the profile(s) of the customer who are attriting. Their age, spend patterns, internet use, geography, aspirational brands,.. all of these and more go into the reasons for leaving and staying.
1.3. Know your value proposition: How do your cutomers purchase, consume, and participate in your brand? How well does this meet their needs and how does this compare with your competitors. What are the friction points and areas that dont stack up. Be honest here, because your customers will be.
2. Engage the Customer: While not every business is so lucky, if you have done enough work in section 1 (Knowledge) you will be able to recognize the signs of customer attrition. Drops in spend, migrating to competitor products or substitutes, all of these are signals that theyve lost that loving feeling. This is the moment of truth. Its the job of your marketers and customer service professionals to engage your attriting customer on a level that recognizes their value, acknowledges their issues and frustrations, and offers to make good on their needs.
Recognizing, acknowledging, and offering to make a customer whole is a very tricky business and one that can conflict with normal lines of control. This is an area that requires sincerity and humility (hard to train for), and also generousity (hard to account for). Its here where customer service leaders like the Ritze Carlton excel. Each Ritz employee gets an allowance that they can use to satisfy or delight a customer when they feel it is warrented. Room wasnt satisfactory - here are complimentary flowers or a dinner to make it up to you. Immediate, personal, and valuable, this is reactive engagement at its finest.
3. Reengagement: While many companies think it is enough to know and engage an unsatified customer, the real experts go one step further. Reengagement is a way of understanding what went wrong, visibly fixing it, and then communicating back to the customer to make sure they stay engaged and satisfied. In the credit card business, we dont just try to save valued customer attritors, we try to maintain or increase their spend and profitability. Offers like double points can be very effective here, as can personalized communications and other forms of recongition. At its best, reengagement can turn an attritor to a promoter.
Everyone knows its cheaper to keep an existing customer rather than find and cultivate a new one. But are we ready to do what it takes to truly retain our most valuable customers?
1. Knowledge
1.1 Know your product: First thing you have to understand is the product or service you are defending. Low cost, low emotional value type products and services are very hard to defend except by the most basic price/convenience equations. In contrast, more complex, expensive, and sticky products and services require deep consideration to weigh the options and repercussions of cancelling. Understanding these elements is the first step to understanding how to save your customers.
1.2. Know your Customer: As much as you can, develop insights into the profile(s) of the customer who are attriting. Their age, spend patterns, internet use, geography, aspirational brands,.. all of these and more go into the reasons for leaving and staying.
1.3. Know your value proposition: How do your cutomers purchase, consume, and participate in your brand? How well does this meet their needs and how does this compare with your competitors. What are the friction points and areas that dont stack up. Be honest here, because your customers will be.
2. Engage the Customer: While not every business is so lucky, if you have done enough work in section 1 (Knowledge) you will be able to recognize the signs of customer attrition. Drops in spend, migrating to competitor products or substitutes, all of these are signals that theyve lost that loving feeling. This is the moment of truth. Its the job of your marketers and customer service professionals to engage your attriting customer on a level that recognizes their value, acknowledges their issues and frustrations, and offers to make good on their needs.
Recognizing, acknowledging, and offering to make a customer whole is a very tricky business and one that can conflict with normal lines of control. This is an area that requires sincerity and humility (hard to train for), and also generousity (hard to account for). Its here where customer service leaders like the Ritze Carlton excel. Each Ritz employee gets an allowance that they can use to satisfy or delight a customer when they feel it is warrented. Room wasnt satisfactory - here are complimentary flowers or a dinner to make it up to you. Immediate, personal, and valuable, this is reactive engagement at its finest.
3. Reengagement: While many companies think it is enough to know and engage an unsatified customer, the real experts go one step further. Reengagement is a way of understanding what went wrong, visibly fixing it, and then communicating back to the customer to make sure they stay engaged and satisfied. In the credit card business, we dont just try to save valued customer attritors, we try to maintain or increase their spend and profitability. Offers like double points can be very effective here, as can personalized communications and other forms of recongition. At its best, reengagement can turn an attritor to a promoter.
Everyone knows its cheaper to keep an existing customer rather than find and cultivate a new one. But are we ready to do what it takes to truly retain our most valuable customers?
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