When does a client leave? Does it occur when the customer picks up the phone to call you and tell you that they no longer want your services? Is that the moment when you should start taking actions to prevent her from leaving?
It is funny (or sad, depending on your point of view) to see the amount of money that companies – especially the largest ones – invest in recovering customers that are unsubscribed.
It’s what technicians call ‘ Client Recovery Cost’ and I, particularly I think money is badly invested, not to say that it is thrown away.
If you have already done the test to unsubscribe from a telephone operator, for example, you could have seen how, at the moment you say ‘ I want to unsubscribe’, one of two things can happen:
- Or they say ‘Well yes, sir, we confirm you at this very moment your leave and you can go to fry tomatoes with any of our competitors’ “
- Or, suddenly, they begin to sweeten your life with a number of extraordinary offers, that you yourself ask yourself if you can offer this now, why had not they done it before?
If you can offer me this now, why have not you done it before?
And this is where I think there is the “core” of the matter. Why do you have to wait for your client to threaten you with unsubscribe to offer you the best of your services? Why not do this before, while you have it as a customer, to be very happy with you, love you, recommend you with your friends and buy all your products, regardless of the price they have?
Do you see now why I think that investing money in recovering clients after they have been discharged seems to throw the money away? And excuse me for throwing you three questions in a row, but it seems like it’s even a matter of common sense.
And it happens even in personal relationships, many of the couples who divorce begin to take it better after separation. It would be worth asking the why of this, right?
But back to our subject, I think it is time to rethink some concepts that are fundamental in marketing and that will be very important in the development of your business: The loyalty of your customers is built, while you have customers.
The clients are loyal while they are your clients.
It’s when you lose them, that you have to recover them. But once the client makes the decision to unsubscribe, you already have very little to do.
That’s why you have to recover it. Because the guy is tired of you, your company, your product and decided to leave with the competition. That’s why your work is now more difficult and more expensive, because you have to climb the slope of the bad experience that your client has experienced with your product.
Dedicate yourself to having happy, satisfied customers.
Instead of calculating the ‘CRC’ (how much it costs you to recover a client) devote yourself to invest your money and your effort in the ‘CMCF’ “- eye, this term is an invention of mine. What does the CMCF mean? Well it is very simple and you should be imagining it for a while.
The CMCF is the ‘ Cost to Keep Your Customers Happy’. I can assure you that it is a much lower cost than the recovery of customers and has a very difficult variant to ignore: A satisfied customer generates more sales, recommends you, gets involved with you and your product. A dissatisfied customer, no, and what is worse, makes sure that others find out what went wrong with you.
What are you waiting for? Do you continue with the ‘CRC’ or do you move once and for all to the ‘CMCF’?