From the course: Customer Retention

Learn to observe behavioral changes

From the course: Customer Retention

Learn to observe behavioral changes

- Not too long ago, I was fly fishing in a beautiful, pristine river. The water was crystal clear, and I could see every rock and every piece of seaweed and everything on the river's floor. As I looked down to take it all in, I noticed a school of small fish swimming under my feet. And then I noticed something incredibly interesting. A fish at the front of the school stopped, and suddenly all the fish behind also stopped. In one swift movement, all of the fish turned and instantly started swimming back downstream. Customers often act like schools of fish. When one fish turns, they all turn. And companies often wait until it's too late to respond. And when they finally decide to do something about it, the customer is gone, and in some cases, many customers are gone. So how do you keep your fish, or your customers, from swimming away? And more importantly, how do you prevent them from leaving? Well, let's consider an example first. Suppose a customer has purchased from your business every month for the past six months, and suddenly two months go by with no activity. But then the customer comes back, makes another purchase, perhaps even two, and then another four months go by, and suddenly the customer is gone. If you had been paying close attention to the customer's behavior, you would have noticed that the customer was showing signs that something had changed in their purchasing patterns. So make it a point to watch for behavioral changes amongst your customers. Odds are, if you can recognize behavior changes from one customer, it's likely those changes will apply to many customers. For example, suppose a group of loyal, regular customers just stop showing up when you expect them to. Something has changed. It's not normal for good, loyal customers to just stop doing business with you. Your next step is to be proactive and do something about it. For example, if your customer's behavior is changing, instead of waiting for the customer to defect to one of your competitors or to stop doing business with you, reach out. Be proactive, and start by asking the customer a very simple question. "Are you experiencing any problems with our products or services?" Many tools these days allow us to automate the process. For example, most online shopping carts have abandoned cart features, which allow us to automate the process of emailing a customer who put something in the cart but did not buy. The beauty of this approach is you don't need a list of suggested questions or a giant retention manual to win back the lost customer. You simply need to proactively pick up the phone or send an email and start a conversation, start a conversation with your customers to learn what's going on. More often than not, the act of proactively reaching out to your customers is enough to bring them back. You might be surprised by this, but the number one cause for attrition is that people get busy. More importantly, they fall out of the habit of doing business with you. One of the most powerful business lessons I ever internalized was this. Everyone's got a lot of stuff going on in their lives. The last thing they do every day is wake up wondering how they can give your business more money. It's up to us. Retention is all about proactive efforts.

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