Why contracting makes customers leave

How many customers does your organisation lose before you even know it?

You have no idea about the business you never heard from because they walked away [David Avrin]

When does the customer experience start? It is often well before your first contact with them. The internet has profoundly changed how we choose who to approach, so by the time a prospective customer contacts you, you are already on a shortlist… but you don’t know why. 

David Avrin (author of Why Customers Leave and How to Win Them Back) chatted to Alan Berg on his podcast about why customers leave, and these tips really resonated with me as they apply directly to the process, branding and content of your contracts:

• Sellers need to make sure that everything that potential buyers are seeing and discovering online says what they need it to say (verbally and non-verbally) – this covers website, reviews on third-party sites, products and any terms on the website. Do your terms reflect the rest of your brand or are they starkly legal?
• Because it is your sale to lose, you need to give potential buyers an experience at least consistent with what they’ve already had because they liked that. Ideally, the experience they have once they contact you should be even better. This requires you to think about your contract process, brand and content.
• You need to be ridiculously easy to do business with so your process needs to be very smooth and easy to follow for your organisation and your customers. Everyone is just a little more demanding and a little more impatient – and your processes need to reflect this.
• You need to recognise that how people buy has changed – is your contracting process easy, convenient, responsive and accommodating? Is your contract content responsive and accommodating or is it one-size-fits-all?
• You could offer that things that others no longer do (the bar is relatively low) such as tailoring the contract properly to this customer and this transaction – even adding their logo to the front!
• Your customers have choices – everyone is good and working in a highly competitive marketplace, replete with talent. If your competitors are damn good and are really really nice people, you need to be better. So what can you do that sets you apart? How is that reflected in your contract?
• The best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour, so set the tone early. This means that customers will judge your competence and character based on your contracting process and content. Get these right at the start – create balance and fairness if you want others to work with you.