HOW TO LOSE A CUSTOMER IN 5 EASY STEPS
Business owners often willingly invest tons of time and resources trying to attract new customers and grow the business. Meanwhile, they sacrifice valuable relationships through simple acts of carelessness and the failure to meet their current customers' needs. As a result, many businesses lose existing customers faster than they can gain new ones.
While securing new business is essential to business growth, retaining customers is just as important, if not more so — your business is not growing if customers are leaving faster than new ones are coming in. And trust me; your competitors are working overtime to steal your key accounts. If you want to make it easy for them to do so, check out these five easy steps to losing your best customers.
Step 1: Don't Listen. Don't bother learning as much as you can about the customer's organization, facility and needs. Don't ask open-ended questions to get the most information as possible, and when they talk, be sure to interrupt them and dismiss their comments. Shutting your customers down is a great way to make sure you miss out on what you need to do to deliver quality service. If you want to keep customers, ask questions, listen and take notes.
Step 2: Don't provide value. Instead of providing what the customer views as valuable, assume what they want and deliver the services you think are best for the customer. After all, you are the expert and know what they want, right? Wrong. Find out exactly what they regard as valuable and focus on delivering those things in the best way possible.
Step 3: Keep customers in the dark. Customer relationships require constant communication in order to last. One of the fastest ways to destroy a customer relationship is to limit communication. This includes not letting the customer know when you're making any changes — from staffing to service levels to billing. Making changes with little or no notice just gives customers unnecessary feelings of uncertainty and adds strain to your relationships.
Step 4: Don't treat customers with respect. Sometimes, as the business owner, you might feel like the customer is being unreasonable. You may even be annoyed but you don't have the luxury of letting the customer know it. The old adage, "the customer is always right," must live on in your mind and in the minds of your staff. If you are rude or disrespectful to your customers, they will your competitor's customers tomorrow.
Step 5: Destroy trust. Customers need to feel like they can trust you and your business or they won't stick around. There are many ways to destroy trust and it doesn't take one huge mistake; you can destroy trust little by little with small things. For example, don't return their phone calls in a timely manner (within 24 hours), don't follow up with them on issues or concerns or to see how they are doing, and be inconsistent so they just don't know what to expect from you. Just like any relationship, customer relationships require trust or they won't last.
Any of the above steps can easily send your customers packing. The key to keeping them from walking away is to do the opposite. Sometimes knowing what not to do is as important as knowing what to do.
How the Internet Began
In ancient Israel, it came to pass that a trader by the name of Abraham Com did take unto himself a young wife by the name of Dot. And Dot Com was a comely woman, broad of shoulder and long of leg. Indeed, she had been called
Amazon Dot Com.
She said unto Abraham, her husband, "Why doth thou travel far from town to town with thy goods when thou can trade without ever leaving thy tent?"
And Abraham did look at her as though she were several saddle bags short of a camel load, but simply said, "How, Dear?"
And Dot replied, "I will place drums in all the towns and drums in between to send messages saying what you have for sale and they will reply telling you which hath the best price. And the sale can be made on the drums and delivery made by Uriah's
Pony Stable (UPS)."
Abraham thought long and decided he would let Dot have her way with the drums. The drums rang out and were an immediate success. Abraham sold all the goods he had at the top price, without ever moving from his tent.
But this success did arouse envy. A man named Maccabia did secret himself inside Abraham's drum and was accused of insider trading. And the young men did take to Dot Com's trading as doth the greedy horsefly take to camel dung. They were called Nomadic Ecclesiastical Rich Dominican Siderites, or NERDS for short.
And lo, the land was so feverish with joy at the new riches and the deafening sound of drums that no one noticed that the real riches were going to the drum maker, one Brother William of Gates, who bought up every drum company in the land. And indeed did insist on making drums that would work only with Brother Gates' drumheads and drumsticks.
Dot did say, "Oh, Abraham, what
we have started is being taken over by others."
And as Abraham looked out over the Bay of Ezekiel, or as it came to be known "eBay" he said, "We need a name that reflects what we are," and Dot replied, "Young Ambitious Hebrew Owner Operators." "YAHOO", said Abraham.
And that is how it all began. It wasn't Al Gore after all.
"Everybody today seems to be in such a terrible rush; anxious for greater developments and greater wishes and so on; so that children have very little time for their parents; Parents have very little time for each other; and the home begins the disruption of the peace of the world."
Mother Teresa
Almonds are members of the peach family.
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