Why are you losing customers to competitors?

The strength of Competitive Intelligence is that it should provide you with insight. Insight to enable you to think about why things are happening. With this in mind, this article asks why are you losing customers to competitors?

You think you have done an excellent job for a customer. The customer says you have also done a good job. So why do people shop around? What motivates them to leave your business and buy your competitors offerings?

And what can you do reduce them wanting to do this?

Here are our thoughts on the common reasons why customer leave the business and what you could do about it.

Poor customer services

The first is perhaps the most obvious one. You provide poor customer service. All sales promises and great offerings go out of the window when you don’t look after your customers. The majority of customers who have experienced poor service will not let you know. They will just go elsewhere. So if you are not prioritising customer-service, it’s likely customers are leaving you.

Possible solutions

Here’s what you could do.

• Undertake an internal audit of your customer services policies.
• Review service levels with your customer services managers and team. The part-time customer service assistant will know more about what customers dislike than you do. Especially if it doesn’t shine a positive light on the service team management.
• Look at and analyse your policies have led your customer’s dissatisfaction. What problems are preventing quick and practical support for your customers? Find out what’s wrong, improve practices and change the policies.
• Ensure it’s as easy as possible for a customer to raise a problem with you. Many companies have introduced support-focused social media accounts. These are public accounts, so you are seen as helping customers. And you will have a more significant incentive to resolve problems quickly. To the customers’ satisfaction because you will get instant thanks, feedback and criticism.
• Respond quickly. Acknowledge a mistake and then correct it.
• Treat the customer with empathy and respect.
• Also, to deal with problems, your customer services team must have sufficient resources available. So they can offer the promised excellent service. Allow customer service team managers to decide how to resolve difficult problems. The autonomy to make choices to benefit your business and customers.
• Introduce a Win-Loss strategy.

Win/Loss analysis:

Win-Loss analysis is a comprehensive, systematic and ongoing analysis. It looks at why your business won and lost deals. Win/Loss delivers powerful insight to transform your company. Making it into a sales machine.

• Determine the questions associated with a purchasing decision. And sales team ability, pricing, contracts and feature and benefits of your offering
• Understand which departments and product lines need to know the results of the Win-Loss analysis
• Then develop an understanding of your sales and marketing process, product lines and target market.
• Conduct impartial interviews with the decision-makers at your new customer or prospective companies. To discuss won and lost deals
• The interactions are analysed and report the overall key findings and trends. More information can be found on win-loss analysis in this article called what is win-loss analysis and how to do it.

Once you have got your own ship in order, take a look at your competitors. Look at how they conduct customer services and answer questions like:

• What do they offer that you don’t?
• What are they great at?
• And what could they do better?
• What would make one of your customers move over to them?

Terrible sales techniques

So, why are you losing customers to competitors? Are your sales tactics up to date? Aggressive sales techniques can be a big turn off for customers. Some will be fine with pressure sales but work out how many customers are losing lousy sales. We have a problem with CreditSafe here in the UK. Their primary product is excellent. The sales team is high pressure, start high with pricing, and sell you truly terrible addons. Their offer at the eventual price is fair. But you have to go through the sales process with highly commission salespeople. And the false promises of F1 Grand Prix tickets and weekends away. Yes, we use Creditsafe, but something else comes along as good we would move. Zero loyalty with them.

Pushing your prospects kicking and screaming. And then cornering them into a purchase only works if there are no better alternatives. Manipulating and coercing a sales out of some will push people away and cause resentment even if they buy off you.

Possible solutions

Introduce value-based selling techniques and get to know what your customer needs. Listen to them and then offer them value-based solutions that address their needs. Describe how your offering will benefit them in the long run and let them make a decision.

Don’t see every transaction as a new sale; try and develop a relationship with a customer. Build trust, have honest interactions with them and get them to like you and enjoy working with you. Provide useful articles, documents and engaging social media. Look at what your best competitors do. Find out how they sell to their prospects. What do they say, how do they say it and what prices do they quote. How do you feel when buying off a competitor?

Poor product or service

You consistently fail to meet expectations. All you will get annoyed customers telling everyone on social media and review sites what they think. They will give you poor reviews that other potential customers will see.

Possible solutions

You have to face up to the fact that you are selling an inferior product and then do something about it. Put all your efforts into designing a new product and service people will want to buy. No amount of advertising or marketing spin will change the fact that what you offer is inadequate. If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it’s a duck. Design, test and build with the best possible materials and adapt your service with customer feedback. Again. A win-Loss analysis is excellent for this. You simply have to provide value.

Do you show value?

You may agree to a great price that you and your customer are happy with. The customer though may pay the money, but they get value. Most customers don’t look and pay for the cheapest product or service available. They know from experience that cheapest is rarely the answer. Not when a customer says they want a good deal and its the money that counts. More often than not, they are talking about how much value they will get.

Possible solutions

Isolate your unique value proposition. What do you give your customers your competitors don’t or won’t. Yes, You’ll need to have an understanding of what your competitors offer to define your value. Create a compelling and straightforward message which details your value proposition. In your advertising, your branding, marketing, social media, your sales and customer service. Live and breath your value proposition.

Inconsistency

Consistency breeds trust in every aspect of our lives. Consistent things are reliable and don’t need to be worried about. When was the last time you saw an Apple iPhone store with a different logo on the front? Macdonald’s sign with a slightly different colour. You don’t, and this sort of attention to detail goes right down to their tone of voice on letters and website. Be consistent. Inconsistent branding can ruin trust. And is often accompanied by inconsistent quality or service. Why are you losing could be down to the inconsistency driving prospects away.

Possible solutions

Provide an experience customers can rely on. From the top to your employees. The sale letter to the website. From email to the advertising. Create and use a guide to establish consistent branding, message and tone of voice. Look at your tone of voice. Ensure that the whole company is saying and writing in the same style. Train your team to deliver consistent quality service. Encourage them to provide a consistently positive customer experience and message.

Finally, so why are you losing customers to competitors?

This article asked why are you losing customers to competitors? It’s best to keep the customers you have already while searching for new ones to grow a business. So, stop your customer churn about your business’ future depends on it.

About Octopus Intelligence

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