Master these methods and you’re guaranteed to lose your best customers. Since hiding exceptions to guarantees is a great way to lose customers, I’d better reveal my exceptions. To read the rest of this article from the New Mexico Business Weekly, see: Surefire ways to lose your most valued customers http://albuquerque.bizjournals.com/albuquerque/stories/2002/11/04/smallb3.html
No matter how hard they try, some organizations can’t or don’t lose their customers.
- Some federal and state agencies, and some local utilities realize that they’re only game in town. If you get good service it’s either luck or some individuals who really care – but good service is not critical for them to keep their customers.
- Some customers won’t leave because they’re masochists, have very low expectations or feel helpless.
Seven techniques for losing your best customers. See the original article for details.
- Burn out your best employees; promote your worst. Pay minimum wage for receptionists and telephone operators who are curt, defensive and passive-aggressive.
- Make buying very difficult. Make perspective customers wade through five-to-ten steps of an answering system with no way to get to a live person. Design a web site that takes forever to download and make purchasing require a complicated series of entries.
- Over charge and under deliver. Apologize profusely for a mistake, promise it will never happen again and then do nothing to correct the problem.
- Become very important. Start coasting. Ignore your oldest and best customers – the easy sales. Show up late for appointments. Talk too much. Don’t bother about product knowledge.
- Be creative about not following through. Don’t return phone calls or wait a very long time before returning them and then forget the customer’s name. Rely on company policy to avoid product returns.
- Use offensive language when talking to customers.
- Insult your competitor's products.
Often, individuals need coaching and organizations need consulting to help them design and implement a plan that fits the situation. To get the help you need, call Ben at 1-877-828-5543.