Loyalty Tactics

How are you winning back your customers? It’s a critical part of your business strategy, but if you’re focused on just performing a clinical, once or twice a year data led pull – you’re probably missing out.

It’s not about how you win back the customers that have already handed in their notice, waltzed off and shut the door – but how you win back customers every single day. If you’re putting money into recouping lost business, why does it make you feel squeamish to inject money into the business you already have?

The main reason is it feels wasteful. You’ve invested at the back end in your sales, tech and marketing. You’ve lured in a customer, and now, you should be able to relax. As long as your product or service performs as expected – well, then it’s business as usual.

That’s fine if you want a normal, usual business. Every other company thinks like this. What would happen if you applied your sales mentality to current business opportunity?  Here are the problems.

Your Customer Campaigns Are Lame

The win back is an email marketing staple that has been giving results for years. A quick download of a database, a few tests and a couple of clicks and you can create an offer code led campaign that recaptures your database. You might expect a few percent to convert, more if you can get a sales push around the campaign. Meanwhile, your current customers get the standard newsletter, or – you ask for more share of wallet or advocacy. Where are the freebies? The campaigns within your GANTT chart?  When they complain on social media do you just refer them to their account manager or contact within your business – and why isn’t it escalated like a normal complaint is? Probably because in many cases, it’s easier.

Your Customer Contact Has Lost It’s Spark 

If you have contact with your customer pre-sale you can expect it to be research led, highly professional, engaging and followed up. How does your current customer care process compare? Has the spark gone out? If so, it’s time to shake things up. Do you ask what could make them happier? How do you act on that? When was the last time you picked up the phone to 20 customers in an afternoon and asked them what they hated about your product or service? If the answer is never – what’s more important?

You Ask Questions Without Any Plans To Make Deep Changes

When you make a sales pitch, everything has a cost. You may even turn down a deal, or business if the numbers aren’t right. When it comes to caring for a customer, this can go out of the window. We’ve got surveys right – and we’re all great at NPS and checking in. We might even ask what we’re doing wrong. It’s what happens after that, that matters. Engaging with your customer and asking them what they want isn’t about making a wish list as long as your leg and doing it, free of charge or saying ‘we hope to be making that happen soon’ and then moving on with your life without making a change. When you ask – you’re putting yourself out there. But are you changing?

To get this right, you have to be at the size to scale. For example, Domino’s collected feedback from customers and created The Pizza Turnaround campaign around how they had listened to customer feedback to make a better pizza. This works because there was enough similar data to roll out a solution that would address multiple people at once. Try this in an SME and you might get caught out. Another consideration when it comes to surveys is the question, are you doing them for real insight? Or just to be nice and fill in your NPS scorecard? Any element of winning back existing business isn’t just about being engaging and ‘nice’. Anyone can be nice. Everything has a price.

You Care Too Much About The Wrong Numbers

When you’re making a big sale, the whole office is engaged. The company-wide emails, the reports, the pitches, the tech, the go-live date, the new arrival of the product – whatever you make or sell. So why do the stats on current customers come to the sales floor to die?  What about the percentage of customers who remain with you – is this a number on your lapel? Are your retention rates really a living, breathing statistic? Do your teams know the top reasons people left your business last year? What about the top 3? Who were the biggest accounts you lost – and why?  If they don’t know – why not? Why would you expect a sale person to sell the dream and the reality of your business at the perfect sweet spot if they don’t know what issue to address square in the face? If you fail to prepare – prepare to fail!

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