Win Back Lost Customers
What could an effective telesales operation do for your business?
Keeping customers is significantly cheaper than acquiring new ones.
You also have a better chance of selling to an existing customer than a new one. According to Marketing Metrics the probability of selling to an existing customer is 60-70%. The probability of selling to a new prospect is 5-20%. So having a strategy that keeps customers happy and prevents them leaving makes sound commercial sense.
A clearly defined communication strategy will enable you to keep in touch with your customers. If you develop a good relationship with a customer you will be able to gauge any early signs of restlessness. You can also prevent customers slipping away by setting up systems and processes that flag customers that haven’t placed an order recently.
The reality is that not all customers are loyal. Some are serial switchers, others may be lured by the promise of your competitors and some are simply fed up with their current supplier. Whatever the reason you need to know. Don’t leave them languishing in a file somewhere. Get that data out and get those lost customers back.
Looking after your data and keeping it clean and up to date is essential. Your database is a goldmine that holds a wealth of valuable information about your customers and prospects. Profiling and segmenting your customers using this data will enable you to target customers with more relevant offers and promotions increasing your sales conversion rate.
Customers that have not purchased from you for some time should to be contacted. Prioritise these lost and inactive accounts based on the potential value of each customer. From accounts that placed a single order and never ordered again to regular customers that simply stopped buying.
Trawling through lists of data can be time consuming. Make the most of your sales teams time by getting your analysts or programmers to provide data that shows customers who haven’t ordered for the past 6 months, then a year, then you can go further back. Prioritise the lists in order of previous sales and remove duplicates.
Winning customers back
Getting the right people to handle this task is crucial. They need to be experienced so they know what to say to get alongside the customer and the wisdom to recognise the best way to say it. They need to be empowered to make the decisions necessary to win the customer back and most importantly they need to be motivated to manage these types of calls.
Once you have the list of lost customers to call and the people trained and ready to make the calls.
You are now ready to call the customer and win them back!
First of all you need to understand why they left in the first place. Ask the right questions with lots of listening. This is where experience kicks in. Every call is different and the sales rep will need to handle each one individually with the business acumen to react appropriately to every scenario.
Be practical and think through prior to the call how you are going to overcome the reason they left in the first place.
This needs to be robust because if you promise something it must be followed through or you will lose them for good. Remember customers talk about their customer service experiences and if you muck up again they won’t hesitate to spread the word.
Let your lapsed customer know that they are missed. Ask them to come back AND offer them a good reason to do so.
This is likely to involve reassurance that the issue that led them to leaving in the first place has been resolved and won’t happen again. Take responsibility for following this through and make sure you have buy in from other areas of the business that will be involved in delivering your offering to the customer.
Start small with an offer to try you again and follow up until you have taken them from a one off buyer to a regular customer.
It is essential that the information gathered from these calls is collated and analysed. A pattern may emerge from the feedback and reasons given as to why these customers left. This will give you the opportunity to address the issues.
If you want to find out more or need help to win back your lost customers then give us a call on 01227 389570