Warning signs of fleeing customers
By Pat Curry • Bankrate.com

How do you know when a client is considering leaving you for the competition? Here are three early warning signs, with suggestions on how to save the relationship.

Declining orders
Look at patterns to find the customers you haven't seen or sold to in a while. Ron Zemke, co-author of Knock Your Socks Off Service Recovery, recommends building a database of customers at or above a certain spending level. "Once a month, run a program that shows you haven't seen anyone from Joe's Barbershop or Glinko Manufacturing in a long time." You can do the same thing with a basic money management program or even a file folder. Keep a list of your good customers. When a certain amount of time has passed since the last order, make contact with a special offer.

Repeat service calls
Nothing makes a customer more cranky than an unresolved complaint. Track the percentage of your customers who call or come in more than once to handle a problem, or how often you send an employee back to a customer for repeat service. If it's more than 12 percent, that's a danger sign, says Grace Major, president of Sigma Service Solutions, a service performance consulting firm in Virginia. Listen carefully to the first request for help. "A big mistake in customer service is we jump in too quickly and cut the customer off," Major says. "When we do that, we don't hear a special circumstance that would affect what we're telling them."

A shabby shop
If business has fallen off, look at your appearance. That's the word from America's Research Group, a leading consumer research firm that found that nearly half of all customer complaints started with a dirty store. "If you're going to have an unclean store, they'll say you don't take any pride in yourself," said ARG's CEO Britt Beemer. "The front entrance and area is like somebody's front yard."

Pat Curry is a freelance writer based in Georgia

-- Posted: May 7, 2001