July 2, 2021
Losing customers is an unavoidable part of doing business. For some businesses this loss may not be detrimental, while for some it can be– depending upon the percentage of the business’s revenue it affects.
Although, losing a customer isn’t really the end of the world, no business likes to lose customers. It was found that even a 2% increase in customer is equal to about a 10% decrease in costs/marketing expenses for the organization. Along with this, businesses could also have a ton of other reasons for wanting to bring back old customers along with new ones like - more sales,sale of a new product that you may have all your hopes on, promoting awareness of a new feature for older products or for your brand in general,fall in sales resulting in the necessity to increase cash flow as quickly as possible, etc.
So, bringing back lost customers should definitely be a priority – especially for small or medium-size businesses, in order to maintain the cash flow and business. And, hey! There are some digitally-focused tips for you to bring them back. Read on.
Theforemost step has to be to find out why a customer has left. Not all customers would leave for one common reason – at least in most cases. Every customer would have had their own reason for leaving – and some of these may be similar to others. The reason can be found by collecting feedback or conducting surveys on your website.
Customers may havestopped purchasing from you or cancelled their subscription to your service for various reasons like product limitations, price barriers, unsatisfactory customer service, a lack of product understanding, and so on.
And you will need a different solution for each of these, so that all (or at least a major percentage) of those ex-customers are willing to come back to you.
So,if the reason listed is that -
1. Prices are too high- your strategy can be to announce price discounts, introduce a “special, discounted price†for members who are re-activating their subscription or give special coupons that can enable them to make the purchases for lesser while adding store credit so thatyour business benefits from it too, along with making the customer happy.
2. If the issue is related to product, like – product limitations or the product ishard to understand, then you could include free demos and/or training videos on your site, or access to simple educational content that can help customers understand the product and its features better; and include the lacking features as soon as possible in future, if that is within your capacity.
3. The customer service ispoor or average, then you could improve your customer service by implementing digital solutions like chat service, where the customers will get machine automated answers at any time of the day immediately – and can reach out to you by calling or e-mal only if they have further talk about it and get a more personalised response. You can also make use of emails to send regular updates and information to registered clients before and after their purchases, with guidance, feedback forms, etc.
Digital technology offers a bounty of solutions that helps you enable these features and anything else that will make clients feel that they are given a high priority will motivate them to continue working or purchasing with your brand, and you can easily make the best use of these with the help and guidance of the right digital partners if you do not possess the knowledge to make those decisions.
There are a good number of technologies and platforms that can also help you with tracking the results of your program. You just need to choose the right technology or platform(s) that can work well with your models and give you a detailed report on which and how many customers successfully came back as a result of your program, and even how much they spent with you since their reactivation. This can help youknow, at every stage, whether you are putting your resources - both human and financial to good use and if your efforts are paying off.