Off-Season Advice: Stop Customer Defection

ORLANDO, Fla. — Customers are always doubting themselves. And they often feel they made a wrong decision and then use this feeling to justify defection, points out marketing consultant Jim Novo.

“As the service provider, you have to counteract these potential feelings right off the bat,” insisted Novo, a marketing consultant with the Saint Petersburg, Fla.-based Drilling Down Project, on Dec. 4 at the Bayer Environmental Science Healthy Lawns, Healthy Business Summit.

His suggestions included creating a new customer kit that includes company history and employee background and contact information that reaffirms the customer is smart and made the right decision. “Include business philosophy in the kit and be honest,” Novo says. “Use natural language and avoid puffery.”

To understand how to keep customers, it’s important to understand the typical reasons customers defect, Novo advises. Some of these include:

• Misleading or unclear ad copy.
• Unrealistic, too-good-to-be-true offers.
• Hidden rules or “gotcha” clauses.
• Execution failure.
• Wrong audience for the service.
• A common trait of defecting customers is an increasing record of slow payments. “To combat this, reach out often and ask the customer if everything is OK with the service,” Novo advises.

Ultimately, retention starts with acquisition, Novo says. “Do everything you can to make sure your sales and service experience meets or exceeds expectations formed by advertising,” Novo says, “and you’ll build strong customer relationships.”

The author is editor of Lawn & Landscape magazine, a sister publication of PCT.