Unhappy passage?
We have all lost patrons of our business, or, if we have only just started, we will lose customers in the future.
When someone leaves us, it is always important to get feedback. Has something one wrong in our delivery? Do they think they can get a better service elsewhere? Is it a question of seeing price over value? Do they just not have the need for us any more? We need to ask, because we can learn.
Sometimes we will have done nothing wrong that we can see. In fact we will have given the best service anyone could. We are dealing with people. All our customers are people. People are all different, and while we hope we can read them and understand them, now and again we will be taken by surprise. Clients just go.
I had a client I helped from the beginning with her start-up business. I sat with her and gave her all sorts of tips about being in business, what to aim for, managing her bank accounts, trying and testing her marketing and looking out for pitfalls and scammers.
Her business grew. It became successful and profitable. I spoke to her often. She called me for advice. I kept in touch. Yet one day I found out through a third party that she was leaving me, or at least taking her custom elsewhere
Within the last couple of months before hearing the bad news, I had spent an hour at her premises and had a long chat with her. Three weeks later I delivered personally some papers she needed. She was friendly and gave no clue our business relationship would be at an end. Yet a few weeks after that I found that she was going, and she didn’t even tell me herself.
I did ask why my business services were no longer required. My now ex-client said that a “friend” had recommended her to go elsewhere. That was it. No proper explanation.
We have to accept set-backs. I am sure our service was exemplary; indeed I know it was as it had my personal attention. We have to get over it and move on.
Accidents will happen. Have you lost a customer for no logical reason? Have you been taken by surprise like that?
Photo credit TheeErin Creative Commons license via Photo Pin
