After the Storm: How to Win Back a Customer

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After the Storm: How to Win Back a Customer

When business relationships falter, it doesn't mean you should give up on them.

HEATHER FOLEY 

You want your business to grow. You know how hard it is to get new customers, and how long it takes to tempt clients away from competitors. Yet, at times, we experience a feeling of hopelessness and inevitability when we lose a customer—like there’s nothing to be done.

However, if you’re determined and follow some simple steps, you’ll find that customers you feared you have lost forever can be encouraged to give you a second chance.

Identify why they left
The first thing you need to do is understand why your customer has left. For companies with thousands of customers, surveys or focus groups can be practical approaches. But for advisors with fewer, high-value clients, this should be done on an individual level.

The questions you may want to ask include:

•Why do you no longer use our products/services?

•Where do you obtain similar products or services?

•What would encourage you to give us another chance?

•What would encourage you to stay with us for the long term?

You may know the answers to some of these questions already (particularly, if you know you have given poor service to a client). On these occasions, you need to consider whether it's more appropriate to ask these questions or to move to the next stage.

Apologize
The next step seems straightforward, yet is rarely done well. If customers have left you and you want them to return, you need to apologize that your products or services did not meet their requirements previously. Together with the apology, you must describe what has changed so that their requirements will now be fully met—or, even better—exceeded.

Make it easy
You should expect some inevitable and natural cynicism from lapsed customers. After all, they’ve already given you a chance, and you’ve disappointed them. This means that you need to make it easy for them to give you a second chance. At this point, you could offer a free trial period or a guaranteed refund if the customers is not completely satisfied. Whatever you do, you need to make it easy for these customers to give you a second chance.

Check in
When you’ve apologized and put together a proposition that makes it easy for your ex-customers to give you another chance, it’s time to remain close to your customers. Agree to regular catch-up meetings and be faithful at sticking to them. In those meetings, ask for sincere feedback and remind them that you want to be long-term partners. Impress upon these customers that you want to learn anything you can to make them totally happy. You then need to feed that information back to the marketing team so that products and services can be developed with this perspective in mind.

Don’t be discouraged if this sounds like hard work. When you consider how much work it takes to win the trust of a brand new customer, winning back an old customer seems easier and worth the effort. In the end, you’ll benefit from the experience. You’ll learn about your shortcomings and have the opportunity to address them.  After all, in the words of Bill Gates, "your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning."

Heather Foley is a consultant at etsplc.com, a bespoke provider of HR technology.