Remember to thank your customers when they leave
In customer service, the focus is typically on serving new customers, but it can be very rewarding to prioritize those who are on their way out. Half of them would actually like to stay, if they get a little help.
By Bjarke Andersen, CEO Connexio
Retention is a direct translation of retention. In customer service, the discipline of Customer Retention - activities that help retain current customers - is an often under-prioritized effort that is downplayed in favor of efforts targeting new customers.
And that's bad for business, as a large part of the customers who leave your business want to stay. At Connexio, across our Customer Retention activities, we see that between 40% and 60% of the customers we engage with about their termination are retained as customers.
The reason is simple. For example, if it's a membership to an organization or a subscription to a service, customers chose you in the first place because they want to support your organization or have access to your service via a subscription.
When a customer says goodbye, we at Connexio see that this wish is often unchanged, but the request is instead due to changes in the customer's life situation. This can be anything from redundancy, illness, divorce and relocation to a new job and a new family. The point is that in many cases, customers contact us because their situation has changed, not because their desire to be a customer has changed.
From a customer service perspective, this is a good situation to work with, as the desire and need for the product and service has been established, and it is therefore about - together with the customer - finding a solution on how the customer can continue in light of the changed life situation. Should the subscription be paused for a few months, changed to a cheaper one, some kind of loyalty bonus can be given for many years of membership, etc.
It's also about a company taking its customers and its own product seriously. If you've had a customer for a number of years, firstly, it's appropriate to say thank you and be grateful for their commitment. Secondly, it's credible to fight to retain your customers because you believe in what you're selling.
The psychology is similar to quitting a job or a relationship. In these situations, it's not nice to have your decision met with indifference and silence from either your workplace or your partner. Often customers even prefer to call when they hand in their resignation, which makes the dialog even easier, as there's no need to spend wasted effort trying to engage with them.
Financially, it takes significantly less effort - as a rule of thumb, at least five times less - to retain customers in the termination situation than to get them back at a later date. Investing in retention is therefore an activity that offers a much better return on investment than regular recruitment activities.
At Connexio, Customer Retention is a central part of what we work with companies who want help with their customer management. It's always among the first things we recommend focusing on optimizing.
