Dissolve Disgruntlement Before Goodbye

When a research study assesses the behavior of one million consumers, you’d better pay attention to the conclusions.
     Researchers at Tel Aviv University and at Arison School of Business note the power of neighbors in influencing people to shop at a particular store or buy a particular product at the store. A network of positive reviews increases the likelihood of adoption by about 80%.
     What about the flip side? How influential are social networks when a neighbor stops buying at a business? The researchers analyzed the effects using data from one million customers and former customers.
     Their findings? Again, the 80% effect. When a consumer’s neighbors defect, the odds of the consumer also defecting go up by an average of about 80%. As you might expect, the effect is greater when consumers view the neighbors as being like themselves, and it’s less when the consumers find that their own experiences contradict the experiences of the neighbors.
     The lesson is to help each customer recall their positive experiences with you. This applies not only to the customers who have loyalty to you, but also to the customers who are defecting. Sometimes you’re no longer able to adequately satisfy a customer who’s been frequenting your store. It’s time for a breakup. When this happens, the emotions probably won’t be nearly as intense as in the breakup of a relationship with a lover or the termination of an employment relationship with one of your staff. Still, there will indeed be emotions, and unless you handle matters properly, those emotions might result in consequences harmful to your business.
     Those emotions often include shame and insecurity, according to researchers at University of Western Ontario and Queens University in Kingston, Ontario. The consequences, the researchers found, spring from this ashamed, insecure former customer deciding to hurt the business by spreading as much negative word-of-mouth as possible. The root of it all is the customer’s belief that the retailer has betrayed the customer’s trust in them. The loss for the retailer is from the customers’ future purchases, but potentially much more than that, from others who are influenced by the negative reviews.
     Keep the relationship alive. Make the last memory that person has of your store one of gracious respect. After they get away long enough to relax their shame and insecurity and to correct their belief that you’ve betrayed their trust, they might come back.

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Break Up with Customers Graciously