Lost customers are forgotten customers. This is a major problem that exists in many companies. Consciously counteract the well-known proverb “out of sight, out of mind” and recognize the importance of customer recovery of your “borrowed customers”.
In our blog entry you will learn why existing customers are so important for the success of your company. In addition, we give you helpful tips to help you ensure a low churn rate while facilitating your customer recovery.
Why you benefit from existing customers multiple times
A lasting business success is mainly based on high customer loyalty and low churn rates. Unfortunately, however, it is also part of every entrepreneur’s everyday life to deal with customers who switch to the competition. Act promptly and systematically, because reactivating inactive existing customers brings many advantages.
1. Customer recovery is cheaper than acquiring new customers.
Since you have already won over your inactive customers as a customer for your company, you know their preferences and needs. This allows you to better assess your customers’ expectations and make it easier to encourage them to sign a contract.
At the same time, you don’t have to prove the quality of your service or products again, saving you a lot of time and work resources.
2. Inactive existing customers can give you useful feedback.
Ask about the reason for the lack of purchase. Honest criticism and helpful suggestions for improvement are useful for your business. As soon as you fix these issues, your inactive existing customer feels taken seriously and is guaranteed to give your company a second chance.
3. Existing customers help you win new customers through recommendations.
Take care of your loyal customers and surprise them positively.
Positive experiences, such as the feeling of being individually addressed and valued, often lead existing customers to recommend your company to other potential customers.
How to avoid losses for your existing customers
Don’t make your existing customers feel like they’re 2nd grade customers.
Instead of focusing primarily on attracting new customers, you should focus on customer loyalty tools and thereby positively influence customer loyalty.
Show your appreciation to your existing customers by surprising them with special offers and privileges.
Overall, it is important to give customers emotional attention. Sincerely thank you after a purchase or congratulate you on certain occasions in an analogous form.
Whether it’s a Christmas mailing or a business birthday wish, you can create your campaign online and send ITGistine compliant to loyal customers via the Postando Business Portal. The integrated QR code function allows you to combine your professional postcard campaign with a special offer tailored to each customer.
In order to prevent the loss of existing customers, it is essential that you deal with complaints professionally. Edit complaints as soon as possible and compensate for the damage immediately. In addition, emotional reparation helps to get a second chance of your customer. Here, too, a personal apology card in the form of a postcard is offered, which can be created quickly and professionally via the Postando Business Portal.
Since communicative and interpersonal factors are the main reasons for the loss of existing customers, it is important to be very careful in this area. Don’t be too intrusive. Your customers should decide for themselves who, how often and, above all, by what means they want to be contacted. It is also helpful to record customer-relevant information, such as emotional details, in a database.
Five tips for customer recovery
You have lost customers despite all your efforts? Even now you should stay friendly and professional. So you stay in good memory always leave a door open. You may have one of our five tips to help you recover lost customers.
- You must act immediately after the loss. If you examine the interpurchase intervals in more detail, you will immediately detect irregular purchasing behaviour of your customers and can therefore act immediately.
- To achieve successful customer recovery, you need to know exactly why the terminations. Were there possible complications, such as delayed delivery times, or an unanswered complaint? In addition, you should also gain a lack of knowledge about your target group through intensive research and analyze the lost customer with regard to it.
- Create an individual conversation guide based on the customer type. Consider which talk is most effective. For example, customer recovery using offline media, such as a personal letter or a creatively designed postcard, is proving very successful. Lost customers feel so personally addressed, not surprised and valued at the same time.
- When recovering your customers, keep in mind that you build up the conversation, whether verbally or in writing, based on customer benefit. Prepare everything professionally, because getting a third chance is very unlikely.
- Avoid wanting to win back customers with bargain offers. Instead, surprise them with an attractive welcome gift after a successful reactivation.
