How to re-win lost customers?

1. Find out why.

Customers don’t walk away without reason, so get to the heart of why this one left. Be honest with yourself. Conduct a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (or SWOT) analysis, assessing why your product or service was no longer perceived as having the best value.

What are the company's weaknesses, especially in light of potential changes in the market?

Are you staying current, both in your pricing and level of service? Has the market moved beyond your capacity to stay competitive? How was your relationship with the client?

Look hard in the mirror for the underlying answers. And if you can’t be objective, put someone who was not on that account team on the case. This is not only an important first step to winning back your client; it’s critical in ensuring that more customers also do not depart.

2. Get it in writing.

You need a plan of attack, and that means creating a written plan for winning back the customer. Lay out benchmarks and timelines for when to check in with the client. And don’t wait too long.

Too often companies make the mistake of waiting a year and a half to two years before reconnecting. That’s a mistake.

You need to find ways to stay on a client’s radar by politely touching base from time to time. And while that outreach may seem random to the client, it should be a well-timed part of your written strategy.

Don’t wait for your client to tire of the company that beat your firm. Find reasons to stay connected on a regular basis.

3. Claw your way back.

Don’t necessarily set your sights on completely winning back your client's business . It may make more sense to incrementally edge your way back by taking on smaller pieces of business. 

With this "foot in the door" tactic, try to score a smaller "yes," a one-off project. Or you might even provide an entirely different product or service than you have offered before. Then set out to turn a smaller yes into a bigger one.

4. Request an exit interview.  

Ask for a meeting with the client to debrief you on the relationship. What were the factors that have gone into the company's decision?  

Don’t be defensive. Take responsibility and apologize, if appropriate. Use the meeting as a means for improving but also as a basis for learning more about your client’s needs. The new service provider may not be asking these questions, resulting in there being a potential opportunity down the road to try to win back the client. 

5. Fire yourself not the firm.

A great vendor-client relationship is often akin to dating or even a marriage. Sometimes the chemistry is just not there.

So ask the client, “Is it me?” Sometimes two companies are a good fit, but perhaps not the two owners in particular. You may need to fire yourself as the leader of the project for the sake of retaining the larger relationship. Asking this tricky question may lead to a much deeper and honest conversation that will lay the groundwork for winning back the client.

Finally, don’t become too emotional. Client churn is a part of the business experience, and once you accept that, however grudgingly, you will also understand that nothing is forever. Look at loss of a client as a new opportunity to win the business back -- and likely at a lower cost than you paid the first time. 

Losing a new sales opportunity to a competitor stinks, because it means you've wasted time and money pursuing a deal that isn't going to happen, at least for you. What's much worse, though, is losing an existing customer to a competitor. In this case, you've wasted the time and effort to win the account AND the time and effort it took to keep them happy. There's more. Because it's easier and cheaper to sell to existing customers than acquire new customers, and existing customers are a potential source of easy-to-close referral sales, even a single lost customer can have a ripple effect that increases your cost of sales! Not to worry. Here's a step-by-step process for winning the customer back:1. Get the backstory first. Before doing anything, find out what happened from the perspective of whomever was working with the account. If you've been intimately involved with the customer, you probably already have an opinion or a theory. However, if you're not close to the situation, get a reading from those who are. Do not assume that whatever pops out of this process is the real problem, which might be entirely different when seen from the customer's perspective. What you need to know at this point is if there are any "landmines" that you might blunder upon when you call the customer personally. This information can help you prepare. For example, if product deliveries to this customer were consistently late, it's likely (although not certain) that this is why the customer is leaving. In any case, you should be ready to explain how you plan to fix the problem in the future.2. Contact the departing customer. Meet (in person or on the phone) with a customer contact. Ideally this should be the primary decision-maker but if this person is not available (or does not exist because it's a consensus-driven organization), try to get in touch with the most senior contact. Even if Step1 uncovered series of horror stories, do not apologize at this point. Instead, ask two simple questions: Why are you leaving us? What would we need to do to keep you as a customer? For you, these two questions are a no-lose proposition. Best case, customers will be so impressed with your curiosity and concern that they'll reconsider their decision to leave. Worst case, you'll learn what's driving customers away so that you can make corrections.3. Listen carefully and calmly. To the first question, you'll get anything from an earful of angry complaints to a simple "we found a better price elsewhere." (BTW, statistically by far the most likely reason for customer defection is lousy customer service.) Regardless of the answer, listen carefully and without getting defensive. Your job at this point is to learn what's really going on, not to win the customer back. If you're unclear on any point that the customer makes, ask for a clarification. For the second question, unless the answer is akin to "Nothing, go stuff yourself," you'll get a sense of what you'll need to do win the customer back. Once again, your job is to learn, not to take action. At least not yet. When you've heard the customer out, thank him or her for speaking with you. If you've heard complaints, apologize for the problem. In any case, tell the customer that you've definitely gotten some food for thought and politely end the conversation.4. Decide if the root problem is specific or systemic. You now know your company's internal view of the situation, the customer's external view of the problem, and the customer's requirements for winning back the business. Your challenge now is identifying the seriousness of problem. Some customer problems are specific to the situation. Such problems include (but are not limited to) personality conflicts, one-time accidents, and management or operational changes with the customer's organizations. The other type of customer problem is systemic to your own business model, such as pricing that's out of whack with the competition, consistent complaints about your sales practices or customer support, and so forth.5. Decide if you really want the customer back. You must now determine whether it's worth the effort to win the customer back, based upon everything you've learned. This will, of course, require you to fix the problem that caused the customer to leave. As a general rule, specific problems are cheap and easy to fix. For example, if the customer doesn't like the rep assigned to the account, it's fairly easy to assign somebody else to that account. Systemic problems, by contrast, are expensive and difficult to fix. For example, suppose the problem is lousy customer support. If your business model depends upon providing low cost (and therefore minimal) customer support, you'll either need to change that business model or carve out an exception for this customer. Is it worth the effort and hassle? Similarly, if the problem is a higher price relative to competition, you must decide whether you want to drop your price for this customer. Will other customers demand similar concessions? ADVERTISEMENT There is no easy answer to these questions. However, it's better to make an informed, well-considered decision rather than just scramble to get a customer back, no matter what.6. Revisit the departing customer. Assuming you've decided that you can and will make the changes that you believe could win the customer back, email the customer and describe exactly and specifically what you're changing or plan to change.

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A critical element in the process of firms’ recapturing of lost customers is the assessment of customer profitability.

 

Customer lifetime value (LTV) is a central profitability metric in analysis of customer relationships; it is typically defined as the net present value (NPV) of the customer’s profitability throughout the customer–firm relationship.

 

However, when it comes to the recapturing of lost customers, the second lifetime value (SLTV) of the customer is the metric of interest.

 

This metric focuses only on the NPV generated after a customer has been reacquired. Specifically, SLTV defined as the future value of a recaptured customer. They assert that when it comes to development and

 

Implementation of a customer recapture program, expectations about the potential future value of a recaptured customer should be the guiding factor.

 

Logically, the SLTV should guide the decisions with respect to which customers should be recaptured and how much should be spent to reacquire them.

 

Some firms engage in extensive efforts to recapture defected customers or to reactivate lapsed customers. For example, during the long-distance telephone wars, one segment of customers frequently switched providers. Some customers switched to benefit from the introductory offer of a competing provider, whereas others simply wanted to solicit

 

a better offer from the original provider (Marple and Zimmerman1999). To recapture lost customers, telecommunications firms engaged in aggressive “come-back” campaigns.

 

When the original provider approached customers to come back, they typically presented them with offers that were better than the original offer.

 

Thus, the consumer usually benefited. However, reacquisition costs (e.g., reactivation fees, telemarketing efforts, come-back cash incentives) often caused the SLTV for the reacquired customers to be

 

negative, thereby representing a net loss to the provider firms. This example illustrates the importance of SLTV to the strategy and tactics of customer reacquisition.

 

The focus should be in determining how firms should price customers when reacquiring them and how they should price them when they have been reacquired. In practice, the favored approach is to offer restarts lower prices for the same product.

 

 

 

Determining the optimal price for recapturing a customer is only part of the challenge in firms’ customer winback strategy.

 

An equally important decision is how to price when the customer has been reacquired.

 

Ensure them, you would not ignore them any-more!

This is a tough one ...depending how you lost the customer ... find out why you did not received the bit/sale

did the competitor had a better product ... lead times ... or pricing

Despite it is a hard task, but briefly  you should follow these steps:

1. Know the reason behind loosing them.

2. Correct and improve the weakness.

3. Know your competitor.

4. Contact customers

One of the most important marketing metrics  that you will ever need to memorize and learn it that it is cheaper to keep or win back customer than it is to acquire a new customer. This is true for several reasons. Firstly, with an existing customer, even if he or she is lapsed or abandoned, you already have customer information. With a new customer, you need to go through the process of finding and collecting information such as a name, phone no and email. The second reason that retaining or winning back a customer is more cost effective than acquiring a new customers that an old or abandoned customer will already have a relationship and a trust level with your brand, company or product.

1. Identify what makes a priority to retention or win back customer.2. Try to identify the tipping point where a customer is at risk of abandonment3. Identify Customers You Will Not Be Able to Win-Back or Retain

Why Care About Lost Customers

If we already know that a loyal customer is the most profitable customer and that a referred customer provides our best return on marketing—then lost customers certainly have more value than stone cold prospects.

A study done by Marketing Metrics says you have

A60 to70 percent chance of successfully selling again to a current customer

A20 to40 percent chance of winning back an ex-customer

A5 to20 percent chance of turning a prospect into a customer

1. Decide if you want them back. Not every customer is an ideal customer. If the customer you lost was difficult to work with, then they may not be a good customer to have. The best thing you can do at that point, is to make sure that they are leaving happy and that they will continue to refer you.

2. Find out exactly why they left. If they are a customer that you want back, find out exactly why they left. If they say price then you know there is disconnect between what you offer and the value they perceive. No matter what the reason, ask at least two more probing questions to find out exactly what you could do to improve the offer. You may not get them back, but you will have information that you can use to save a customer who may be thinking of leaving.

3. Adjust your offer. Your lost customer research might uncover some information that you can use to create a new and more profitable offer for your customers. Document your existing offer and the price paid for that offer, then collect other offer and price combinations. You can survey your customers using a trade-off analysis technique called conjoint analysis.

4. Take responsibility. If you made a mistake to lose them ask them what they would need to have to make them stay. That means that you fix what went wrong with no requirement for them to remain as a customer. They may still choose to leave, but if they have a great last experience with you, they may refer you to friends and family who may be a better fit as a customer.

5. Ask for permission to send them industry information. Create a marketing list that is for special prospects and past customers. This list should be used to send information and education on industry topics that they are interested in. There is a terrific and unknown fulfillment service out there called Cyrano System that profiles your audience and then delivers information that they are interested in—no heavy sales involved, but keeps you in front of them.

Do an analysis on all the sales that you won and what it was about those customers that got them to choose you over any other alternative. Then dig into your lost customer list and take a look at why those customers left. Finally, don’t forget to match those lists against the competitive strengths of your organization. Don’t just take customers for the sake of having more customers. Focus on delivering on your brand promise and nurturing your customer experience. Only make adjustments that will further those two elements and make a positive impact on your bottom line.

Hi... Re win lost customer is difficult that getting a new client.

1. Get an appointment from that client @ their convenience.

2. First Listen to the issue why they have left us.

3. Find the best solution to resolve the issue.

4. Apologies the client for the issue which has occurred.

5. You have already won that client.

6. Now just serve the client.

 

It depends on the cause and situations,i believe there are many ways to solve these issues.  

"When there is a will, there is a way"                    

  Thank You.