One of the most frustrating things as a business owner is having a customer who comes to you once and is never seen again or a customer who is a regular that suddenly stops using your goods or services. Without repeat business, most of you couldn’t survive for very long. Getting those lost customers to come in more often or start coming back again can be a frustrating job. So how do you go about doing it?
Before you do anything else, give some thought to which customers you want to get back. Shotgun marketing efforts, while reaching all your customers, waste effort. You want to specifically target lost customers to concentrate your energy where it belongs. Three things to consider are how often they normally work with you, when was the last time they worked with you, and what are they worth to your business over the lifetime of your relationship with them.
Once you determine who you want to target, you need to find out why they haven’t returned or have stopped working with you. Look at things from the customers perspective. If you’ve worked with them for a long time, you may already have a theory but remember that the real reason may be completely different than what you assume. If you don’t have a close relationship with a particular customer, see if there’s anyone in your organization that does. The last thing you need when you call a lost customer is to step off a cliff you didn’t know was there. Knowledge is power when you are trying to build or restart a customer relationship.
When you contact them, listen carefully to what they have to say. After you ask the first question, you’ll either get a dissertation on why they’re unhappy with you or a one sentence dismissal such as “We got a better price” or “They have more of what we want.” Don’t get defensive. Your job at this point is fact-finding. You’re searching for the real reason your customer left. It may be the reason they gave you initially but frequently it’s something else entirely. If you’re unclear about something they said, ask for clarification. Odds are, by the second or third question you’ll have a pretty good idea of the real problem.
After you’ve found, the problem is the time to start to win them back. There is a marketing technique called ARM; acknowledge, respond, move on. Acknowledge by restating what they see as the problem. Respond by stating that you are sympathetic to their concerns and what you what you will to fix the issue, and move on by telling them why they should come back. Remind the customer what they liked about your business, what you are going to do to correct the problem they had, and what you are going to do in the future to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Once you’ve won them back, make good on you what you told them. Deliver the superior customer service that will ensure they don’t start looking elsewhere again. Getting them back is a challenge, keeping them coming back is where the real work, and the reward, happens.