When your customers are silent, do you take that as a sign they are happy? If your company has the attitude that “no news is good news” when it comes to your customers, here’s a surprise: No news is rarely good news.
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When your customers are silent, do you take that as a sign they are happy? If your company has the attitude that “no news is good news” when it comes to your customers, here's a surprise: No news is rarely good news.
A surprisingly high number of your customers may, at this very moment, be at-risk. They may be looking for another vendor. Maybe they simply feel like it's time to “try something new.” Or that “there's got to be a better way.” More likely it's because they're feeling like you simply don't hear them when they voice their concerns. And once they feel unheard, they're at-risk.
What is an at-risk customer?
Most of your at-risk customers are silent or unresponsive. For every customer complaint, there are 26 other unhappy customers who are silent, according to the business management consulting firm Lee Resource International.
Other at-risk customers may complain excessively. Take those complaints as a gift. Customers don't complain just for the sake of complaining. They are voicing a problem. Ignore those complaints and you put the relationship at risk.
Those of us in sales and customer service actually welcome the complaining customer. If they articulate a problem, we can fix it. Unfortunately, many at-risk customers do the opposite — they don't communicate.
Other symptoms of the at-risk customer include:
• Volume of orders declining
• Rumors through the grapevine that they are checking out a competitor of yours
• Vague references about not being happy with the relationship
Companies that train their sales people in consultative selling can mobilize those skills to spot the at-risk customer. It's all about listening. Listening is part of an ongoing process that starts with the sale, but has to continue well afterwards.
After our distributors make a sale, our customer service people reach out to them and to the end users to do a quality service assessment. We provide them with an assigned inside sales associate, who can provide them with immediate answers to questions about product features and capabilities, pricing, samples and supplies.
Everyone throughout the process is looking for an opportunity to service them and to make sure we identify any small problems before they become big ones. That kind of a culture makes it easier to spot and deal with any at-risk customers before they decide to go to a competitor.
Prevention is always the best way to address a problem. It's our responsibility to make sure the customer is satisfied after the sale — not theirs. A lot of companies stop the sales process after the sale and that leads to problems.
But even for companies that understand and promote support after the sale, problems do arise that threaten the relationship. If a customer is dissatisfied, the best way to address it is quickly, openly and honestly. If the perception of the customer is that the solution you recommended isn't working, you have to identify the core issue that's causing dissatisfaction.
There are times when an account is at-risk because the customer's decision-makers do not understand the full picture. Purchasing managers, for example, may look only at price without understanding the reason for a cost differential. Once that becomes an issue, that account is at-risk.
At that point, sales people may need to seek out help from others in the company who understand the usage of the product. If a purchasing agent becomes nonresponsive, that's a signal to our customer care team that we may need to reach an intermediary within the company who can help us make the case for our product with the purchasing agent.
Opening alternative channels with the same customer can also help us discover why they are considering a new vendor or solution. Finding a new advocate inside that company can help uncover problems and deal with the issue directly.
Dealing with the at-risk customer and saving those accounts is simply a matter of good business. It costs a lot more to get a new customer than it does to keep an existing one. Servicing new business is more expensive in the short term than doing all you can to keep existing business.
The facts support this. Three out of five consumers would be willing to try a new brand or company for a better customer service experience, according to the White House Office of Consumer Affairs.
And that customer service experience is expected to become more and more important. The customer intelligence consulting firm, Walker, forecasts that by 2020, customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator.
At-risk customers do not need to become former customers. Through a combination of detective work, listening, responding and adapting it is possible to turn the at-risk customer into a solid, long-term customer.
Jason Fisher is the director of business development at Intertape Polymer Group (IPG), a Canadian-based packaging products and systems company.
