Make the Most of Lost Customers
A lost deal occurs when a client decides to no longer continue using your product or service. A closed-lost deal occurs when a prospect decides you are not a fit for them.
While losing a customer may sting, there is a way you can make lost deals work for you. If you’re familiar with our blog, you know there is nothing more powerful than the voice of the client and receiving their feedback. This is why when you receive word of a client who is leaving your business, ask them for a final meeting to get feedback about their experience with your company.
Why Should I Meet with Lost Clients?
Speaking with a client who is leaving your business will allow you to learn exactly why they are not renewing and can alert you to issues that other customers are experiencing. With their insights, your team can work to improve your product or service. Learning from your customers will allow you to fix problems plaguing your customers.
In other words, your client is a gold mine of valuable information about your product and your organization. Their input about the experience they had with you can help you retain other clients.
How Do I Ask for the Interview?
Once your customer has let you know that they will not be renewing, ask them for a quick meeting to discuss their experience with your organization. Let them know that you are not trying to win them back as a customer, you are looking to get some honest feedback about their buying process and your product or service. Ask them what factors might have made a difference in their renewal. Be sure to keep the meeting short to respect their time; under thirty minutes is best practice.
Additionally, an honest and respectful atmosphere between you and your customer is a great way to strengthen your relationship. Even though they are leaving your business, that is no reason to leave with a negative feeling. Their positive experience with you could help with future sales down the road.
What Should I Ask My Customer?
Questions you can ask your client include:
- What stopped you from renewing with us?
- Are you switching to a different product? If so, which one?
- How would you rate our product or service? What in particular did you like or dislike?
- Is there anything missing from our product or service that would have changed your mind?
- How would you rate your experience with our team?
- Do you have any additional feedback for us?
Remember that the goal of this meeting is to learn what your product or service could be doing better to get more customers to renew in the future. With that in mind, use open-ended questions to encourage your customer to share their story. Don’t use questions that lead them toward an answer you are looking for, stay neutral and positive.
Keep your question list fairly short so that you don’t go over your allotted time. The questions above are good ones to start with, but feel free to let your client guide the conversation. Ask them follow up questions to get to uncover any problems they were experiencing.
What Should I Do with the Data?
As always, whenever you ask for feedback, the most important thing is to use it to make positive changes in your organization. Review your findings from the customer interview and compare it with others. What are the common reasons people are leaving your business? The answers they give you can tell you a lot about your organization and your marketing.
- Customer is switching to a competitor product. What are they offering that you are not? Are their prices lower than yours? How can you differentiate your product from your competitor’s?
- Your price is too high for this customer. Are you marketing to the wrong target market? Do you need to be marketing to a demographic that can better afford your prices?
- Customer says the product was not a good fit. How can you better position your product in the market so you can find your true target audience?
- Customer experienced issues with your product. Work with your team to fix these problems before they become issues for other customers.
Let the insights from your customer help shape your product or service. With their information, you can improve your product to help retain other customers.
A Platform That Can Help
You know the importance of feedback from your customers. Insightpath is here to take it to the next level and make getting feedback as simple as possible. Our platform allows you to easily capture data from your clients and then use it to improve your business. Contact us today to learn more or get started with a free trial.
