Where have all our customers gone?
This often quoted statistic suggests…
68% of customers leave because of poor attitude or indifference on the part of the service provider
For completeness, of the remaining..
- 14% are turned away by product or service dissatisfaction
- 14% are lured by a competitor
- 3% move
- 1% cease trading
The reality is many businesses don’t know how many ‘active’ customers they have. Do you?
One office supplies company stated they had c.600 ‘active customers’. Being realistic, these products are purchased on a monthly basis, and any customer who hasn’t purchased within the last 3 months is surely an ‘ex-customer’.
The outcome:
Only 33% of their clients were ‘active’, they certainly hadn’t all gone out of business so by default they must be spending elsewhere.
Here’s another one:
80% of defecting customers describe themselves as “satisfied” or “very satisfied” just before they leave
Source: Don Peppers (Peppers & Rogers Group)
It just reinforces the absolute need to understand what your ‘existing’ customers think about your products and services, what motivates them to buy from you and what more you might consider doing so they don’t become one of the statistics above.