Why Customers Are Leaving: 3 Proactive Ways to Prevent It

Imagine losing 10-25% of your customers every single year. Well, it turns out that this statistical figure is true according to some studies. Some think that attracting new leads will compensate for that loss and there are few who take time and dedicate their resources to understanding why customers leave and stop interacting with their business.

Acquiring new customers into your business is six times more expensive than keeping loyal ones from leaving. If you really want to maximize profit and even turn customers into valuable brand advocates, learning the reasons why they abandon your store is more important than feeding all your hard-earned profit into the constant cycle of attracting new leads.

Customers will leave when they don’t feel their needs are being served and their loyalty to your brand/business isn’t being noticed or reciprocated.

If 10-25% of the business’ total number of customers is leaving and total spending for acquiring new ones costs a fortune, the result would be a substantial loss in annual profit and if that cycle continues, you could end up in a total disaster.

That is why patching up that dangerous hole is more important than bringing in more customers into your business bucket. Wouldn’t it be nice to keep adding more customers while loyal ones stay and become your instrument of promotion as they go on spreading awareness about your brand? There are ways in extending individual customer lifecycle and we’re going to discuss them proactively in this article so read on and find out how fun the solutions can actually be.

1. Treat Them Like You Know Them

Customers hop from one store to the other looking for the right products or the best deals. But your business can have an edge among the competition by simply letting them feel that they are important.

You should be able to make them feel that you know what their needs are and feed their interests as if they’re your keen. Customers mostly leave when they feel like they are being treated as faceless milking cows or nameless consumers whose sole purpose is to generate profit.

The era in which your business currently exists is characterized by personalization. If you are able to provide a personalized shopping experience to your customers, studies have revealed that 40% of them will most likely do business with you again.

Studies further reveal that close to 50% of customers would likely purchase a product that they aren’t interested in at first if your business is able to offer more personalized recommendations. Moreover, a solid 40% of shoppers will even be willing to spend more than what they initially intended if personalized communication and marketing strategies are implemented.

So take personalization strategies to the next level and your customers will surely stay! It is not enough to implement this in your email campaigns alone.

Take it further to include those contracts, letters, invoices, and all the other forms of customer communication that your business does. Forget about the old generic mass communication and marketing strategies because they simply no longer work nowadays.

This means that you don’t just use your customer’s first and last name when communicating with them, you will need to exert more effort in trying to offer the best possible recommendations by looking into your customer’s past purchases.

Seek to segment your market effectively and communicate with them in the channel that they prefer. Keep yourself updated with the latest personalization strategies as your business grows and invest on them rather than just focus on advertising and promotion.

2. Keep Them Interested In Your Products and Services

No matter what product or service it is that your business provides, you will always lose customers at some point. But if you fail to invest time and effort on understanding the exact areas where customer interaction stops, you will end up losing even more!

Whether it’s a website, brand, product and/or services that you are providing, it is important that you keep engaging with customers from every point while also providing them with a great customer experience.

Doing this will encourage your customers to try new products or services and even share them with others. Great customer experience is king and as a business owner, you need to ensure that you’re keeping your customers in love with what you’re selling or the services that your business provides.

Take time to study the overall customer experience that you provide until you zero in on the exact moments where they start to lose interest in your business. If it’s an online shop then you can seek the help of some apps that can help offer customers a chance to get rewards by promoting your business to others.

There are also software out there that can help identify customers who are at a high risk of leaving very soon so you can know who needs to offered some promos and discounts in an effort to keep them.

This will empower you to constantly be on the engaging side of things especially on the critical areas and instances of the overall journey that your customers take while interacting with your shop. And the best thing with most of these apps is that they allow you to perform critical steps in real time!

3. Engage With Them In The Right Way

It’s easy to get so caught up sending all those important customer communication that you already forget to think whether the way you’re doing it is effective or not.

If your customers are mostly young people or millennials, you should put in mind that they would prefer communication through email or text while older ones like those aged 55 and up would value either print or face-to-face communication.

Take time to find out how your customers want to be engaged with or contacted in matters such as:

- Invoices

- New products and services offered

- Promos and offers

- Policy and price changes

- Subscription adjustments

There are those who would prefer learning about this on social media while others would prefer receiving them through email. Study more about the strategies in customer communication and identify the ones that fit your customer base. If your customers belong to different age groups then definitely use a different channels to ensure that you’re serving everyone the right food!

In our modern day and age where omnichannel communication exists, customers and new leads will surely come from all these channels instead of just coming in from a single entrance door.

Some will like your social media pages and start following you while others will read blog posts in your website. Others will choose to subscribe to your newsletters and older ones would like to receive SMS on reward offers or new products.

Consistency among these marketing channels is also a must. You should do this along with a strong presence of dedicated customer support platforms that are ready to make customers feel that they are important and being cared for.

Use the same tone in your social media posts; be consistent with the graphics that you use across different channels so your customers would not be lost.

Taking advantage of all the available channels for marketing, promotion, and customer engagement will result in increased revenue as customers start engaging with your business from every channel available and feel appreciated and cared for no matter where they’re coming from. Be wise on this part and avoid those channels and marketing strategies which will not benefit your business.

Be a Keeper!

There is no secret formula for a successful business so if you want one, you’ll need to be ready to invest time and money to reach your target. We’ve given you some proven steps that you can take to prevent customers from leaving your store and it’s about time you start working!

Your existing customers are far more valuable than the new ones you’re trying to acquire so invest more on them and keep them hooked up by giving those rewards and offers that they truly deserve. You can even turn them into effective brand ambassadors if you choose to. Learn more about that here.

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