25 Ways to Lose a Customer
Blog: Kofax - Smart Process automation
Customer expectations are higher than ever, and the risk those demands present to your business is as stark and predictable as can be: if your business isn’t living up to these soaring expectations, you will lose revenue and customers. The unfortunate but incontrovertible fact is even one poor customer experience can cost you the customer who experienced it—and in today’s social media world, that customer’s entire network, too.
What specifically do customers want from you? Only you can definitively answer that question for your business, but chances are these four characteristics are on their lists:
- Transparency: Order status, payment, mortgage application process status, or service ticket status.
- Immediacy: Did their payment get credited? Has their claim been processed? They need to know now.
- Ease: Are you easy and effortless to work with? Can they interact with you in the channel of their choice?
- Security: Will you keep personal and financial information safe from hackers and thieves?
The acronym is TIES. Think of the four attributes listed there as the “ties” that bind a customer to your business. If you can provide the desired customer experience, in the manner he chooses, when convenient to him (not necessarily you), you’ll earn his business and ongoing loyalty. If you can’t, he’ll take his business to someone who can.
To illustrate the latter of those possibilities, here’s a list of twenty-five customer sentiments you should take steps to avoid:
- “Fax it to you?! Seriously? I haven’t sent a fax since my Palm Pilot broke in 1999.”
- Despite the fact that I’ve been your customer for years, ask me my name again.
- Hand me a pen and a stack of loan documents the size of a small child to manually sign.
- “I need to provide all this info again? Forget it. Opening an account here is too complicated.”
- Address me as “Dear Customer” in your correspondence instead of by my actual name.
- Make me call you, wait forever, go through an absurd phone tree just to talk to you, instead of giving me a self-service option.
- In your marketing materials, tell me about the size and financial might of your company instead what’s in it for me.
- Force me to come into your office so you can make a copy of my driver license.
- Make me print-out, sign and mail signed paper documents back to you when I could easily scan and send.
- “I live in San Diego. Why are you sending me marketing offers for snow shovels?”
- Let someone buy a weed-whacker using my account number and a fraudulent signature.
- Make me type in a zillion tiny numbers just to check the balance on my gift card.
- “You don’t have a mobile app? Am I being punked? Does it have to be this hard?”
- Put me on hold while you go and research my customer information, and then transfer me to someone who can’t help me.
- “My neighbor’s bank lets her deposit a check just by taking a picture of it with her cell phone. Why don’t you offer that?”
- Make me manually enter my customer information over and over and over again.
- Tell me you don’t know where my invoice is or when it will be paid.
- Make me visit your inconvenient branch in the short hours it’s open just to pay a bill.
- Be oblivious to your competitor’s rates and prices and insist that I’m “getting the best deal.”
- “Look, I’ve been in an accident and I’m a little rattled. Can’t I just upload photos of the damage through your app to start my claim? If I have to wait here, why don’t you know where your closest adjuster is?”
- “Stop sending me junk mail! I’m already your customer but I won’t be one for much longer if this continues.”
- “Why is it taking you so long to get back to me?”
- Make me retake photos of my ID and other personal information several times because your app can’t read it properly.
- I placed an order but haven’t received the product or even an invoice. What’s going on?
- Offer me “free” content but only give it to me after I’ve told you my name, address, phone number, blood type, favorite ice cream flavor, what superpower I’d like to have, and my mother’s maiden name.
As consumers, we can all relate to these frustrations. As marketers responsible for engaging with customers and driving business growth, we all have to ask ourselves what we can do to resolve these challenges?
The right technology not only helps you keep your customers, but it can also position you to take some away from companies that are asleep at the customer engagement wheel. If you don’t meet customer expectations, rest assured, some competitor will.
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