Reasons Why Your Business May Be Losing Customers:
Losing a major client is a precarious moment for any small company. It is a particular risk if your business sells to other businesses, because it is more likely that a few clients could account for a significant portion of your revenue.
Customer retention is not easy. Like any other relationship, it is not straight forward to figure out exactly what someone expects from you from time to time. It takes a lot of hard work and dedication to keep your customers satisfied.
Ideally, you should never rely on any one or two customers for a majority of your sales, but it happens all the time.
Loyal customers are the best customers! They continually buy from you and also usually refer you to their acquaintances, business partners, family and friends, all based on their experiences with you and your company. Customers are what make your brand successful. On the other hand, having unhappy customers can affect your business in many different ways.
Reasons your business may be losing customers:
Focusing on Price Instead of Customer Value
The best approach for smaller businesses that cannot compete with the huge corporations is to focus on the value of their offerings more than the price point. If you charge more than your competitors, without offering superior quality or added value, it is unlikely that your product or service will be bought. Trying to get involved in a price war with a large corporation will only squeeze your margins and make it more difficult for your business to operate. This leaves you vulnerable for someone else to swoop in and steal your customers. Customers demand good service, convenient operating hours, accessibility, and quality. Focus on delivering the best you possibly can instead of trying to be the cheapest in your market.
Providing Poor Customer Service
Placing customer service at the heart of your business model will lead to a successful thriving business and loyal customers. You have to be consistent, reliable, and responsive. Continuous poor experiences with your business can easily drive your customer(s) to your competitor.
Poor Quality Products and or Services
If you are interested in building a good and reliable customer base, do not offer/deliver knowingly poor quality products or services. If you do, sooner or later it will come back to haunt your company.
Sell products and services that you are confident and for which you will not be ashamed of or have to explain to the customer why you delivered what was not up to the standard agreed and expected . Otherwise, negative feedback will scare away customers and ruin your business too.
Neglecting Technology
Customers today have very high expectations coupled with short attention spans and very little tolerance for inefficiencies. These expectations are not limited to a physical business location. Your company’s digital presence must also be up to date. Slow checkout, lack of convenient payment options, lack of delivery options, bad website layout and design, unfriendly mobile website, and more will make customers turn away from your business to others who consistently meet their needs.
An Incompetent Team
The incompetence of staff in technical matters and unwillingness to understand them is unprofessional, and it leads to loss of customers. Organise training for employees to familiarise them with the products, conduct regular product knowledge tests, and encourage self-training. The Pre Sales and Sales manager should be experts who help the buyer in their choices. They should advise and teach the prospect and customer.
Not Rewarding Customer Loyalty
Discounts and promotions are great but if a customer does not feel like they are receiving the best value from you, they may move on to your competitor. Competitors are always in the corridors trying to lure and entice your customers. Continually making your customers feel appreciated in small ways can pay off big time in the long run.
Ignoring churning signs in advance
The most obvious way to ensure customer retention is to prevent a customer from leaving.
If you really pay attention, you can always detect the signals of your customer’s impending departure from your company.
To capture these “warning” signals, you need to identify the key variables of customer behaviour, such as purchase patterns, product usage and history of customer service enquiries. Then, you will need to analyse these signals and take action to stop your customers before they churn.
Rude and Uninterested Employees
Rude and uninterested employees are not good for any business. Train your staff. Enrol employees in sales courses, where they will learn how to communicate effectively and create a raportoire with customers. Study the techniques of cross and up-selling. Increase the motivation of sales people and control how they communicate with customers. Ensure you get feedback as to how they are getting on in their job and address any concerns if any.
Staff Issues
If your employees are not happy and you have a high rate of turnover, you cannot expect to keep your customers happy either. Your employees need proper incentives, engaging work, and they must feel able and empowered to take care of the customers that come through your door. Happy employees = happy customers. Do not justify a high rate of turnover with an excuse that change is good. If you do that, you are simply fooling yourself and will eventually lose your customers because those employees who leave/left deal with your customers.
One thing you can never train and or replace is the way an employee who has left your company was dealing with your customers. That is a personal trait that is irreplaceable.
In a Nutshell
Operating a successful business big or small, comes with many diverse challenges. Make sure that you are doing all that you can to provide what your customers need, make sure they can get it how they prefer to get it, and make sure that they know how much you appreciate their patronage and value their services and products like they are yours.
The difference between companies that grow and those that don’t is customer retention. The more customers that you can keep and continue to sell to, the more likely you are to achieve your business goals.
