If you’re serious about taking your company right to the very pinnacle of its niche, you cannot afford to hand consumers to your competitors. Should you allow this to happen too often, you will quickly find yourself falling behind in the race for profit. Not only will this have an adverse affect on your bottom line, but it will also be sure to damage your overall brand image.
Quite simply, if you want to grow your organization over the coming 12 months, you must make a conscious effort to win back any customers that you may have lost in the recent past. To find out what you must do to achieve this crucial feat, be sure to read on.
Seek consumer feedback
How can you possibly win your customers back if you don’t know why they left you in the first place? If you’re serious about regaining lost sales, you must leave no stone unturned in your attempt to seek consumer feedback.
Here are five things you must do to perform this all-important task:
- Run surveys and competitions via social media
- Integrate an easy-to-use feedback box onto your company website
- Monitor your social media channels and timelines on a daily basis
- Offer rewards in return for feedback
- Request short feedback on your order confirmation pages/links
Identify your lost sales
Before you embark on your inaugural ‘we fixed it’ campaign, you must first identify the sales that you have lost. With the right information at hand in this instance, you will be much better placed to tailor your ongoing consumer outreach program around the exact wants, needs, and specifications of your target audience members.
To aid efforts to unearth and identify the reasons for lost customers, you should consider embracing a dedicated Sales and Operations Planning process. As stated in this Supply Velocity sales operations case study, S&OP will provide you with clearer picture through the use of an algorithm. In turn, this will aid you in your bid to catch your consumers before they go wander into the arms of a competitor.
Run a ‘we fixed it’ campaign
Now that you’ve collected consumer data and identified your core inefficiencies, it’s time to run your first ‘we fixed it’ campaign. This is your chance to showcase the fact that you have gone above and beyond to rectify whatever problems blighted your services in the past.
Here are three strategies you must embrace in your bid to win back your lost customers:
- Actively discuss the customer experience with your clients
- Don’t bury your head in the sand — acknowledge your problems
- Announce your improvements and incentivize return custom
Losing customers is a costly challenge, there’s no denying that. If you don’t want your business to be blighted by this, it’s imperative that you go above and beyond to retain your consumers. Should the worst case scenario occur, you must act quickly to win back the sales and customers that you have lost.
