Before asking why customers stopped, confirm that they stopped
- Segment
- Consumer services
- Topic
- Customer retention and win-back
- Method
- Quantitative telephone survey of the inactive customer base
| Client | Last order | Status | Actual situation |
|---|---|---|---|
| •••• 0412 | ••/•• | Inactive | ? |
| •••• 1187 | ••/•• | Inactive | ? |
| •••• 2093 | ••/•• | Inactive | ? |
| •••• 2760 | ••/•• | Inactive | ? |
| •••• 3318 | ••/•• | Inactive | ? |
| •••• 4471 | ••/•• | Inactive | ? |
The database shows what happened. The actual situation only comes out in conversation.
The starting point
A company had launched a digital solution to simplify reordering an essential, regularly used product. The idea was to make a traditional purchase simpler, with the support of technology and an app.
Over time, some registered customers stopped placing orders. The database showed this clearly, but not why. It could have been price, trouble with the technology, delivery failures, customer service problems or simply the habit of buying the old way.
Before taking any action to win these customers back, the company needed to understand what was behind the drop-off.
- Price?
- Difficulty with the technology?
- Delivery failure?
- Customer service problem?
- Habit of buying the old way?
The database didn’t say which.
First, confirm
The study didn’t take the database’s classification at face value. Each interview began by confirming where the customer actually stood: whether they still had access to the solution, were still using it in some way and had really stopped buying.
A win-back strategy built for people who abandoned the service won’t work for those who never left, and it may even annoy them.
- Still has access to the solution?
- Still using it in some way?
- Really stopped buying?
Then, understand why
The phone interviews combined closed-ended questions, to measure, and open-ended questions, to hear customers in their own words. Rather than assume a single reason, the questionnaire covered the whole experience: the technology, the app, ordering, delivery, customer service and billing. It also checked whether customers had understood what the service offered.
Whenever a problem came up, the interview dug deeper. If a customer said “the app had a problem,” the interviewer asked what problem and when.
- Technology
- App
- Order
- Delivery
- Customer service
- Billing
For the customer, there is no such thing as a “delivery failure”
There’s only a service that didn’t work. For the company, the app, logistics, customer service and billing are separate departments with separate teams. For the customer, they’re all one thing, and a failure anywhere undermines the value of the whole solution.
That’s why the analysis traced each reason for leaving back to the point in the journey where it started. Each department could then see its own part of the problem, not just the end result.
- Appown team
- Logisticsown team
- Customer serviceown team
- Billingown team
the service
Who might come back, and what would bring them back
The survey also asked what would need to change for customers to start buying again.
That made it possible to separate customers with little chance of coming back from those with concrete issues the company could fix. Instead of treating every inactive customer the same way, the company learned where its efforts would pay off, taking market differences into account too.
What changed for the customer
- 01
Fixes to the journey, wherever the experience was breaking down.
- 02
Different win-back actions for each type of inactive customer, rather than one approach for the entire base.
A customer database records what customers did.
Only a conversation reveals what they would do.