How well do you know your customers? Do you know them by name, know where they work and what position they hold, know the names of their family and their interests outside of work? If you have any interaction with your customers at all, either in a marketing and sales function or as a customer service representative, you may be able to confidently say you know all about your customers. However, there is a difference in knowing about your customer – such as the facts I just listed – and knowing your customer… and your marketing should be built on the latter. Why? Because customers leave companies that don't engage them on a feeling level.

In an article titled The No. 1 Reason People Stay or Leave, business author Ken Dooley claims that 80% of defecting customers said they were "satisfied” or "very satisfied” in customer surveys just before they bolted for another vendor. Clearly there was a disconnect between what they were asked in a customer satisfaction survey and what they were feeling about the company they were about to leave. So why did they leave? 70% cited poor customer service and 60% cited an indifference shown towards them on the part of the salespeople. So how can it be that someone would fill out a customer satisfaction survey and give a company glowing reviews when they had a horrible customer service issue and felt like their sales rep didn’t care? The answer is rather simple. Most customer satisfaction surveys deal with the item purchased and avoid the relationships involved in the transaction. It can be that a person is happy with the product or service they are buying. They might believe they received a quality product at a good price, but they felt like they were less than valued as a customer. It is this feeling, emotional level that is the tipping point for the majority of customers.

There are typically four reasons a customer will leave you: poor quality, too high of a price, took too long to deliver a product, and they did not get along with the people inside the company (typically sales and customer service reps). If you mess with any one of these four pillars of retaining customers, you risk losing them. Get two of them wrong and you most definitely will lose your clients.

Here is where both sales and customer service become part of your marketing equation. You must understand customer expectations, especially when it comes to their values, their attitudes, and the choices they have beyond your product and services. That requires you to get to know more than just facts about your customers, it means you have to get to know them on a feeling level. For instance, customer attitudes can change. Do you know when a shift in their thinking is happening? If you do, you will know how to shuffle your marketing to accommodate this shift. If you don’t know what they are thinking, they will perceive you as not caring about them. How do you do this? First, if you are doing customer satisfaction surveys, I would encourage you to leave space for open ended questions. You will get at the heart of what your customer is thinking if you let them tell you what they are feeling rather than just click a box under a set of customer satisfaction questions you have already written for them. Second, if you are in a business that sells face-to-face, such as an outside sales person would do, take account of what is happening with your customers. Ask questions that probe beneath the surface. It will mean that you might get more customer complaints than you would if you just steered clear of the situation. But you have to look at every complaint as an opportunity to retain a customer rather than it being a bother to your day. If you solve the problem, use the solution as a marketing tool. The solution becomes the new and improved version of your brand.

Dooley claims that when the relationship between customer and sales reps are exceptional, customers are 10-15 times more likely to remain loyal to your brand. That means you have to go beyond knowing the facts about your customers and get to know them on a feeling level. Take what you find there and build your marketing around it. It will make a difference in your customer retention.

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The No. 1 Reason Customers Stay or Leave, by Ken Dooley, June 10, 2013, www.customerexperienceinsight.com