Keeping the Love: Why Clients Leave and What to Do About It

Are you operating under a false sense of security?

Here you are, humming along, you’re attracting customers, money is coming in…But as a trailblazer, you don’t leave any stone unturned.

Here’s the deal. Happy clients, customers and patients – the ones that love you – sing the loudest…to you. Unhappy ones sing to everyone else. It’s estimated that the average “wronged customer” will tell 8-l6 people about it. Over 20% will tell more than 20. (Source: Lee Resource Inc )

So if a customer has had a bad experience or is less than ecstatic about what you’re doing, there’s a high probability that you won’t find out, until it’s too late.

And if you do, thank your lucky stars!

And yes, unhappy customers negatively affect your bottom line.

According to Michael LeBoeuf author of How to Win Customers and Keep Them for Life, customers leave your business or organization for 1 of  5 reasons:

1% die
3% move away
68% because of an attitude of indifference towards the customer by the staff
14 % are dissatisfied with the product
9% leave because of competitive reasons

That means that you control up to 72% of lost customers.

And just in case you thought this only applied to for-profit companies, think again. Today’s non and not-for-profit organization must woo its funders, donors, and recipients (what I call a triple-threat) to stay afloat.

Don’t assume all is well. Get feedback, from everyone, often. And no, I’m not talking the universal…

“Everything is good, right?”

Figure it out – comment cards, phone calls, whatever it takes. Here are 5 tips to get this feedback train started to officially keep the love of your supporters:

1. Ask open ended questions. Sure it’s easier to ask the run-in-the-mill rating question, “On a scale of 1 to 5 how would you rate our service?” Stumble into any restaurant and you’ll find a food-stained comment card with questions like this one. But the information is not nearly as helpful to you.

The only way to get real feedback is to force some real thought. So asking a question like “How would you describe your experience with the sales person, the cashier, advisor, etc.?” will be more helpful. But careful, we humans have the attention span of gnats these days. Whatever surveying you do keep it simple, keep it short (3 questions or less) and you may have to give us some type of incentive (like a coupon) for completion.

2. Ask THIS rating question: The only rating question really worth its weight is the Net Promoter Score question which is,

“How likely are you to recommend us to a friend?”

You’ve probably been NPS’d by car companies, hospitals or your bank. All other questions may be insightful or interesting, but often fail to be as correlated to actual business outcomes as this one. At the end of the day, if someone is not willing to refer/recommend you, your business is in trouble.

3. Listen to the Feedback: This is not the time to wear your feelings on your sleeve. At the point you open yourself up for feedback, you’ve got to be ready for the good, the bad and the ugly. But avoid the feeling that you must defend yourself or worse, prove the customer wrong, because, well the customer is always right (in their eyes, that is).

4. Keep the good stuff for marketing: Sometimes you get really good feedback, the kind that you know belongs in front of the world. When you do, use it for your benefit. Include testimonials, quotes  and stories in unique marketing spaces like your email signature, on a menu, in your newsletter, on various pages of your website (not just the cast study page), and as social media posts – just to name a few places.

5. Take action: All feedback may not be helpful but take all of it seriously. After all, if the idea is not to identify issues and fix them (or market the good stuff) then this may not be the time to do this exercise at all.

If you’re interested in more help collecting and marketing feedback that keep your customers’ loving you, then check out my Testimonials that Sell E-course here.