Customer retention

Is it entirely necessary to focus on customer retention? The answer is an emphatic YES, but it isn't quite as simple as that. You need to decide where to put your focus.

It is imperative for any company to retain customers, but there are 3 drastically different cultural styles:

1. The first is the "no approach" approach. Yes, it happens! There are companies who show no apparent care for customer retention.

2. The "fear of rejection" approach. Born out of the fear that your customers may want to move to another supplier. This fear leads to the negative approach of preventing customers from having freedom of choice through restrictive contracts, customer lock-in, bargaining on price, begging them to stay - it comes in many forms.

3. The "love thy customer" approach. This is the positive approach to customer retention and involves an introspective look at what you could be doing better, how you could service your customers better, and what you must do to make customers want to choose to stay.

The love approach isn't necessarily more work than the fear approach, but it does require honesty, imagination, and a desire to have truly happy customers. Unfortunately there are very few companies like this because it requires less brilliance to adopt the fear approach.

*This post was inspired by my new MacBook from Apple Inc. a company of people who obviously love their customers, love giving you the best, and who don't use lawyers and fear to lock you in like that other technology company!