A Missed Opportunity to Retain a Customer

Yesterday I wanted to cancel two subscriptions, so I went onto the website and found that I had to call the companies and cancel over the phone. I fully expected to be asked why I was cancelling as I had been a long time subscriber.

Was I asked? The answer is no.

This was a missed opportunity, especially for one of the companies.  As a subscriber, the newspaper was delivered daily to my home. I was happy with the service as it was always delivered early in the morning and the only reason I was cancelling was because I am reading more of the news online. When I was talking to the person cancelling the subscription he seemed to be in a rush to just find out my account number, cancel the subscription and get off the phone, so I did not even enquire about the weekend delivery which I was still interested in.

The marketing lessons I learnt from this includes:

• If you have a customer who wants to stop doing business with you find out the reasons as you just might be able to overcome the problems or at least leave the door open to do business with you again in the future.
• Keep in regular contact with your key customers to ensure you gain feedback on your products or services.
• Use the feedback from customers to find ways to continually add value to the relationship.
• Don’t take a regular customer for granted as key customers need your attention to strengthen the relationship.