Over the life of a business, it gains a lot of customers and loses a lot of them. One thing that is usually ignored, or not considered, is the cost of gaining a new customer who is then lost. Amazingly most businesses don’t have, or even know they need, automatic strategies to win back lost customers and clients.
Every one of the customers who walk into your business costs something to get. The cheapest ones to acquire are those who walk in when they notice a sign and those who have been referred to you by your existing customers. However, even they are not free; it costs money to put up signs and even more money to offer good enough service to get them to refer a new customer.
So when any one of your customers leaves for the competition it should be taken as a serious loss of income. Immediately embark on a strategy to get back your lost customer.
So why win back lost customers and clients?
1. Reason one is obviously common sense.
If you want to grow your business and customers cost resources and capital to get, then it makes no sense to just let them leave. You should have automatic systems that kick in to win back lost customers.
2. To win back lost customers is much cheaper than courting brand new prospects.
Gaining new customers is an expensive and complicated affair. If you can cheaply get more customers, it’s a good idea to take advantage of the opportunity. Reactivating lost customers is easier because you already had a relationship with them.
3. It improves your business and plugs the holes that are losing you customers.
To win back lost customers or clients, you have to establish why they left in the first place to understand to get them back. This discussion helps you identify what about your business pissed them off and correct it and this way you stop losing existing customers or clients in the same way.
4. It gives you an opportunity to up-sell the customer on a product that can most likely offer better satisfaction to them.
Gaining back customers or clients lost to competition forces the business to expand and offer more value to the customers or clients by trying to surpass what the competition is capable of offering.
5. It’s an instant boost in morale for the whole business.
Few things in business are as frustrating as losing a customer or client especially to competition. To boost morale, implement strategies to win them back. This way the whole mood of the company including yours as the owner will be lifted once you get them back. This process makes a business stronger.
To keep increasing your profits exponentially, stop losing customers. To do this, create strategies to win back lost customers and clients and plug all the holes you discover in the process.
However, not all customers and clients can be won back. Some are not lost to competition, they simply may no longer need your product or service for whatever reason you can’t control. A common reason is they might have moved away from your geographical region and are now out of reach and delivery cannot be made to them.
There are a few circumstances that lead a customer away from your product or service that are beyond your control. So the first thing to consider before embarking on reactivation is the original reason the customer had for leaving. If the customer is irretrievable but hopefully still alive and well, you can still request for referrals from them.
So in conclusion, don’t waste money spent on acquiring customers by simply letting them leave. Fight for them and where possible, create the best strategies to recapture them.