Laura Liswood is a researcher in America. Ms. Liswood’s specialty is lost customers, what makes them go away, what can we do to keep them and so on.
Her latest research quotes some amazing statistics. They are frightening.
She calculates that if a business loses just one customer per day and the average customer spends $50 per week, then the net loss to annual revenue (when you compound the numbers) is a frightening $989,000!
Couple that with some other statistics and you begin to see why customer retention is so critical. One other set of statistics that ties in nicely is what’s called "the lifetime value of the customer." Just two examples illustrate the point:
The lifetime value of a supermarket customer is $250,000 — put it another way, the average customer, you and me, will spend $150,000 in our lifetimes at the supermarket.
It means, of course, that when we go in to complain about the broken bottle of jam and they respond by telling you you must have done it in the car, they just kissed good-bye to $250,000 (less a little bit if you’re my age!)
Or let’s take cars. The lifetime value of a customer is calculated to be $200,000. So how come we tend not to hear from the people that sold us our car unless we call them.
In my case, I used to drive a Jaguar. I heard only once in 12 months from the person who sold it to me. There were no phone calls after each service to see if I’m happy. Call that building a relationship?
I call it losing a customer, don’t you?
It’s critically important we remember Laura Liswood’s research. And it’s even more important we take action on it, don’t you think?
As specialists in business development too, we can help you build yourself a better business. So give us a call. We can start off simply with a planning session before deciding to go on. That way you are under no pressure, and the choice to go forward is totally under your control. And remember what we said about our guarantee.
