Are you losing customers? It’s also helpful to ask your customers if they are leaving you, and what can you do to get them back. Stay in touch with them.
It’s amazing to me that many of the CPG brands I work with lose as many of half of their heaviest customers from one year to the next. And the percentage is higher for lighter buying groups. Good strategies can be developed to solve those problems once you realize you are losing customers.
There is tremendous power in keeping current customers – especially your heavy buying customers. My research shows heavy buyers typically stay with the brand longer, use the brand more exclusively, buy on-deal less often, engage with the brand more, and cost less to keep vs. acquiring new ones.
Deb Rapacz • Great question.
How can you measure if you are losing your customers?
The real simple way to measure is how many did you have last year over this current year or count every six months.
Look at:
- Who is returning and who isn’t?
- Have your customers signed up for your loyalty program or not?
- When was the last time they referred or bought from you?
- When Is the last time you spoke to them?
- Have you asked them to fill out a feedback survey?
- Why aren’t they returning to your business?
Some people keep track of their customers by using a ROI – Return of Investment to get a new customer. Some people track ROR a return on the relationship that you have invested in.
Shehryar Anwar
• Net Promoter Score is surely an effective way of measuring, monitoring and improving customer loyalty. The concept revolves around gauging relationship strength by getting customer feedback on regular basis. I suggest you read “The Ultimate Question” to get an insight into what this single number can do to your business.
If you aren’t concerned about losing your customers, this means someone else is serving them. If you are always busy with new customers, depending on them to keep returning on their own will not help you, especially if you have an off-season or off year. Yes, it’s great to be busy, however if you aren’t continually marketing your business, customers will forget about you. Then what?
Developing a relationship with your customers will surely grow your business faster and be more profitable. People seek a community or Tribe to belong to.
For example, there is a wonderful restaurant here in Sedona, Elote – they do nothing to encourage customer loyalty. Yet they are packed every night for dinner. Why? The food is excellent and they rely on visitors to come to their restaurant. It’s one of my favorite places to dine..Why? Staff is friendly the food is fresh, very good and because I am local, I’ll chat up the visitors offer suggestions what to do in Sedona, while they are here. Plus, the bar or community table is a place to hang out and build community.
If I had the opportunity or if Jeff would be interested in retaining his raving fans there would be a few things I would suggest that he could do. The challenge that I have found, if you are in a tourist town, or city being too dependent upon visitors and not locals can leave you in a challenging place.
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