Here's Why Most Customers Leave.....

The worst thing about customers leaving is not that they no longer purchase from you or even that they now are likely to buy from your competition. The worst part of it all is that they will likely never tell you what caused them to leave in the first place!

Over 90% of customers that leave a business never tell the people at that business why they left! Because of that, the same mistakes or conditions that caused one customer to leave are now going to continue. The end result is that more customers will leave and the trend will continue until someone figures out what is wrong!

We all hear horror stories every day about something dreadful that caused a customer to leave. A huge fight, shouting and yelling, or massive product failures like the ones currently experienced by Toyota. But the fact is, most customers do not leave for obvious reasons or because of some dreadful experience. Most customers leave because of something that created a negative part of their experience.

People leave for one simple reason. Because they can. No one, unless they are the absolute sole source for a particular service or product is immune to customers going to purchase elsewhere. People are free to purchase from whomever they wish and because of this, we have to remain vigilant in how we treat our customers. Perhaps even more than vigilant, we need to be relentless!

Today, our customers have more options than ever before and because of this, their expectations have grown as well. Because they have so many other places to get what they want, they can afford to be more demanding, more "picky", and more careful.

For example, let's say you love a particular ice cream. We'll call it Dave's Famous chocolate Fudge Delight. Every week you take the family over to the local ice cream store to get some. You love it and enjoy the experience. Then, one day you go to the store and the person behind the counter does something to annoy you or spoil the experience. Maybe she or he ignored you or said something that offended you. Whatever happened, it made you feel uncomfortable. So the next time you want your ice cream, you try another store. Normally you wouldn't even think about it but the last experience made you think about going somewhere else.

You go to the next town and find that the same ice cream is for sale at this store but the cost is less, they give you free sprinkles, and for every 10 cones you buy, you get one free! Better value for you and you still get the same product but at a lesser cost! So from that point on, you go to that store to buy your ice cream. It's worth the drive because you get more value. Or at least perceived value.

The point is that had you not had that bad experience, you would have never thought to go somewhere else and would likely never found out that a better value even existed. But the fact that you even looked resulted in a lost customer for that ice cream store.

The moral of the story is that you never, ever want to give any customer a valid reason to even look anywhere else. Businesses are cut throat and will do anything to lure customers away. Don't make it easier for anyone to take your customers away. make sure everyone in your company gets the customer service training they need to reduce mistakes and errors and are able to create the absolute best experience for each and every customer.

That is the way businesses stay in business, keep being profitable, and are able to grow while those around them fail. It's not difficult, it's not expensive, and it's not time consuming. The question is not why should you invest time and effort into customer service training, the real question is why on earth wouldn't you?????

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