How to lose a customer in 5 easy steps......

Change is inevitable.  Companies get purchased, systems get changed, processes become more/less automated, and data corruption occurs.

How companies handle this delicate transitions is critical to keeping loyal customers - but some organizations still don't get it.  They obviously have not done the math/ROI on recruiting a new customer versus keeping an existing customer!

Here is an easy guide to lose a customer in 5 easy steps!  Hopefully, your team won't do any of these steps!

1. Make the transition hard for the customer (how many steps on their side versus vendor side to work through)
2. Ignore the impact of a transition (call volume, UI issues, not enough staff to deal with problems, lack of communication, too short a window to transition, etc)
3. Show customers that your data is corrupt (email communications sent out to consumers on incorrect data)
4. Ignore a blatant mistake - and make no actions to correct it (knowing something went out due to bad data but no plan to rectify it or at least acknowledge it)
5. Ignore social media and/or online/telephony data trends when it comes to performance (customers get angry quick - and they have a variety of mediums to vent such pain)
6. BONUS: have no way to "win-back" lost customers

A recent example that I experienced around this topic was when my one credit card vendor became another.

Approximately two months in advance of the transition, they sent out (paper) communications around the transition plan and what it meant to customers.  Needless to say, I ignored them - they were after all, paper!

Then, while following instructions provided, I could not migrate my account from vendor #1 to vendor #2. Literally following instructions provided, I was sytimed.  This went on during multiple attempts. Reaching out to phone service, I attempted to rectify this - but was left in a 20-min queue hell of MUZAK.

In this specific case, my payment was due - and since I was without any other method,  I made a payment by phone.  Which was recognized by their system - even though a day later, their database kicked out a no-payment message to me as a "courtesy".  My first reaction was, "shit, my payment via phone was not recorded".  But since the very nice phone system had provided confirmation numbers and such, I knew that their data was corrupted or out of sync.

Given all of this, I called the vendor about these issues - and like most telephone technical support nowadays, the first responder was useless.  Nice guy - don't get me wrong. But he was not trained to shoot my call above him to a manager - I had to ask for it.

The manager, again - a very nice individual - was forced to reiterate corporate BS language from a binder manual (just to cover her ass) versus truly dealing with the problem: acknowledging the mistake, apologizing for it, giving some insurance it won't happen again, etc.  Instead - at the end of the pre-selected scripts they were to follow - I had to make myself an EX-customer.

Based on all of this, I don't expect a strong win-back strategy from the vendor - but here is why they should care: it costs most companies upwards of 4-10x to land a new client versus retaining an existing one.

In the case of credit card companies, I'm sure that there is another algorithm (as in how much money will we make off of a client - in this scenario, I'm not a profitable customer for them.....I pay on time and in full) - but guess what?  I have a social circle of thousands based on social networking and in-person interactions - and I have a personal preference to alert others to shady/bad/horrible vendors.  

How does that translate to the vendor in terms of potential revenue?  

Have they run those numbers?