Can anyone tell me as to where I can get some generic figures/information as to why customers leave suppliers.

Any help would be fantastic!

Neil

I would say this greatly differs from industry to industry (even if it's all call centre work)

Neil

I seem to recall that Royal Mail ran a campaign based on customer loyalty and they had some stats/info on their website to review and download - don't know if its still available though.

Regards

Stuart

THE MAIN REASONS FOR CUSTOMER LEAVING A SUPPLIER IS THAT HE IS NOT SURE THAT HE WILL ACTULY GET THE SAME THING THAT IS TOLD BY THE REPRESNTATIVE CAS IT IS A COMMON PRACTICE IN THE SALES REPRESNTATIVE THAT THEY EXAGGERATE THE PRODECT A LITTLE BIT...
ANONTHER MAIN REASON IS THAT IS THE PRODUCT IS RELATED TO ANY BASIC SEVICE E.G TELEPHONE LINE, THEY MOSTLY WANT TO DISSCUSS IT WITH THEIR SPOUSE BEFORE MAKING ANY DISSION.
SO MY VIEW IS IF YOU ARE REALLY CONFIDENT THAT YOU A GIVING THE CUSTOMER THAT WOLD HELP HIM SAVING MONEY OR BETTER SERVICE WITH ADDED FEATURES THAN I BELIVE TELE SALES REPRESENTATIVE SHOULD GIVE THE CUSTOMER A BIT SPACE AND TIME TO DISSCUSS IT WITH THE SPOUSE ETC.
IF ANY OF MY FRIENDS OVER HERE HAVE ANY VIEW ABOUT MY IDEA I'LL APPRECIATE THAT.
WITH REGARDS ASIF

JOELS073@YAHOO.COM

There are about as many reasons for leaving a company as there are companies! The only way of finding out why customers are leaving is to ask them when you have the chance, ie when they are on the phone to you. A brief automated survey at the end of interaction with the Agent, asking the single question 'would you recommend this service to a friend' (and if not why not?), will give you that information. Research from both the London School of Economics and Harvard has found that customer loyalty is key to predicting business growth. By asking customers the one question 'Would you recommend our services to a friend?' they could predict the sales growth of a business. So there are good reasons to get this information, and I do believe it is something you can only get from the customers themselves.

Nice use of the CAPS LOCK key Asif.

Understand what the customer thinks certainly is key - although I'd urge people to be careful with automated surveys, especially at the end of calls.

Often customers are ringing because they want something fixed, and they'll want that process to be as quick and pain free as possible. Anything that delays this process is likely to be unwelcome.

Therefore, I suppose the key is to make them feel that the survey provides benefit/extra value to them in some way.

Square Systems sound familiar - isn't that the ex-MM lot?

Regards,
Darryl

From industry research from across the world we can say that typical and generic caller expectations are:

• Be accessible
• Treat me courteously
• Be responsive to what I need and want
• Do what I ask you promptly
• Don’t make me deal with poorly trained and ill informed agents
• Do it right the first time
• Follow up as promised
• Tell me what to expect
• Be honest
• Be socially responsible
• Be ethical

I would say therefore that customers leave because the organisation does not meet these expectations.

John Nuttley reports back (in another topic) that "an important question raised by a recent contact centre conference is why do customers leave and why are contact centres not asking the customers that very important question when all it takes is an extra phone call / email or in our modern age SMS." Concurring with that, I wonder why Darryl you are urging people to 'be careful with automated surveys'?

There are numerous benefits. You get instant and unbiassed feedback from the horse's mouth, that can be used to improve your services. And many customers appreciate being given the opportunity to comment. All it takes is one question. If their answer is no, ie. they do not wish to take part in the survey, no more of their time is taken up. The positive trade-off however is a large amount of customer feedback information easily accessed online, that you would otherwise not get.

Very few customers actually get as far as the complaints procedure if they are unhappy, all they do is change service providers or leave. If you can get feedback from customers before they leave, or at least at the point of departure, you gain invaluable information that can help to avert future departures.

Lots of good insights there that I agree with.

I've always been a big advocate that irate customres are an extremely valuable resource for information. While a lot of companies look at those screamers and yellers as an annoyance let's face it, those are the people telling you the truth about their perceptions.

I am sure there are a lot of customers out there that disconnect or leave without ever giving the slightest hint. The irate or screaming customer speaks for himself, and alot of those people.

Sometimes the answers are so simple yet we humans have a tendancy to over complicated things for ourselves and in the commecial world employ consultants to tell us what we all ready know if only we had put the efforts in and dug a bit deeper for that simple answer that covers all

Like asking them why they leave and investing in human consideration and support for those people in the front line who are trying to keep those valuable customers in the first place

I also here that CSR,s actually enjoy giving good customer service and would like to go the extra mile yet are under pressure by call centre management to sort things out as quick as possible because speed of work is judged in their perfomance reviews

A case of quantity leading the way over quality ??

The word good old common sense springs to mind in regards to this

Empowerment is important in meeting Ann Marie's conditions for good customer service.

Those taking the calls need to have the authority to resolve the issue at hand, nothing worse than "I'll have to refer you to....." for an irate or disgruntled customer.

Had an experience recently with a kitchen company where one manager made a lot of promises to resolve an issue but was left powerless when she tried to arrange who would do the refitting because we would not accept the orginal fitters back. She promised different fitters showing empathy with our position but the fitting manager refused to go along with this - result very irate customers and no way we would ever recommend this company.

Thanks to ECCF for this one: You must deal with any disconnect between corporate policy and call centre operations. Unless someone in the call centre points out that disconnect, the call centre itself is going to be the focal point of accountability when problems erupt into the public sphere. It's the call centre manager's butt that's on the line when an overzealous rep meets a super empowered customer. It's the call centre’s interaction that gets recorded, either by your monitoring system or by the customer himself.

This implies that you as call centre professional have the tools at your disposal to diagnose these impending problems. And as the custodian of the customer experience within the organisation, it's on the call centre manager to alert corporate management to the dangers their policies are causing to customer experience and to brand management.

First, questions of blame and responsibility, the "who" questions:
* Who is to blame when the call centre works perfectly -- when it excels by any traditional call centre measure -- in execution of a flawed strategy?
* Who is responsible for fixing it in the aftermath?
* Who should take the lead in making sure it doesn't happen in the first place?

Second, questions about process, workflow and collaboration:
* Why does it happen?
* Why does the existence of a flawed process go unrecognised?
* Why is the situation dangerous to both the call centre operations and the company itself?

And finally, the drill-down questions that get to the heart of what you have to do about this kind of problem…. the kinds of questions that lead you to the right kinds of measurements or performance optimisation methods:
* How do I know it's happening, or about to happen, in time to fix it? What do I measure to get this information?
* How do I avoid a bad outcome once I've detected a flaw in the processes?
* How do I take steps to fix it?