5 Reasons Why Customers Leave Your Business
Growing your business and getting new customers is pretty exciting.
But when some of your customers start leaving your business, it’s important to understand why.
After all, there are a lot of resources and costs going toward acquiring new customers for your business. This means that with every customer that leaves your business, there are costs associated with them and loss of future revenue.
Today, we will discuss some of the top 5 reasons why customers decide to leave your business:
- You provide weak customer service
- You provide few incentives for your customers to return
- It’s too hard to contact your business
- Your product or service no longer meets customer expectations
- Your Product or Service Offers Little Value
1. You Provide Weak Customer Service
We’ve talked about the many benefits of good customer service in the past.
The fact is that consumers see value in good customer service and will often choose a business based on their customer service offerings.
In fact, 96% of customers responded yes to switching to a competitor due to bad customer service
For example, think about how many consumers prefer buying Apple devices thanks to their consumer-friendly Apple stores with “Geniuses” who will help them make the right purchasing decision. If they ever run into any issues with their device, they can just bring it to any Apple store and have it looked at.
This Customer Service strategy was so successful that many other tech giants such as Microsoft and Samsung started copying it and expanding on the concept.
Want to learn more? Read our guide on why good customer service is important for your business.
2. You provide few incentives for your customers to return
So you’ve acquired a new customer and they have made their first purchase. Great!
Now, how are you making them want to come back and purchase from you again?
Some incentives include discounts for future purchases, loyalty programs, special events for loyal customers, and more.
Make sure you are collecting, storing and properly organizing your customers’ information in order to maintain contact with them. A modern CRM can help you achieve this and let you communicate with existing customers and incentivize them to return.
3. It’s too hard to contact your business
When a customer has questions or runs into an issue with your product or service, how can they contact you?
Can they easily contact you through Social Media? Email? Live Chat? Phone?
How fast are your response times for each channel?
Remember, when a customer has questions about your product, it also represent a sale opportunity.
If a customer is eager to buy your product but can hear back faster from a competitor, they will most likely go with them instead.
You are probably already offering support via phone and email. But are you offering support via live chat? Read our guide on why you should have a live chat on your website and how it can benefit your business.
4. Your product or service no longer meets customer expectations
Over time, your product or service might stop meeting the expectations of your customers. As a result, your customers find and alternative and end up leaving your business.
The best way to prevent this scenario involves 2 key steps.
- Make sure you focus on the collection and review of customer feedback. If you don’t know how your customers feel about your product, there’s no way to improve it.
- You then need to implement the learning from your customer feedback into your product development strategy. Out of each new development task, how many of them originate from customer feedback? Are you actively tackling common product problems and issues?
This approach not only improves your product and services but also lets your customer know that you value their feedback and constantly implement their insights into your product development strategy.
5. Your Product or Service Offers Little Value
When you start losing customers to a competitor, your first instinct might be to lower your prices in order to undercut the competition. This in turn also cuts your own revenue and profits.
But here’s a fun fact: consumers will pay more for the same kind of product if it provides them additional value.
For example, think again about Apple products and how customers are willing to pay extra for these devices due to the iOS and MacOS environment of apps and features that add value to the product offering.
Aside from pricing, additional value can also work a retention strategy. For example, think about how Amazon Prime offers multiple benefits aside from free 2 day shipping which makes it even harder for customers to cancel their service without giving up on free movies, show, music streaming, digital storage and more.
Now that you know why your customers are leaving, let's show you how you can keep them! You can read our guide on 10 Customer Retention Strategies that work!
Closing Thoughts
There are multiple reasons why a customer might leave your business.
But for every reason, there are strategies you can put into place to prevent it.
Which strategies will you go for?