What you can learn from past customers

Obtaining feedback from past customers can help you to enhance your offer, retain current customers, entice new ones and win the old ones back.

Many business owners spend a lot of time and resources thinking of ways to entice new customers through the door, focusing on feedback from current customers or even potential customers.

Very few soloists spend time thinking about the insights that can be gained from past customers.

Have you got customers that you haven’t heard from for a while? Do you know why they have left or stopped doing business with you? Nobody likes negative feedback, but researching ex-customers can provide valuable insights into potential weaknesses in your current service or product offering and reveal areas for potential improvement.

Finding out why customers leave is the big question that can shine a light on gaps in your product or service offering.

Here are some common reasons customers give for discontinuing doing business with a product or service provider (sourced from 1000ventures.com):

It is interesting to note that nearly one in ten customers is lured away by a competitor's offering. Customers are usually apathetic about finding a new product or service provider, and it takes something big to make them move. If a customer is lured away by a competitor, either they have had an extremely negative experience with their current provider or the competitor’s offer was amazing. If, in your case, it’s the former – here’s your chance to rectify your product. If it’s the latter, work out how you can top the offer of your competitors.

Dissatisfied customers are excellent sources of ideas on how you can improve your products. Their feedback gives you the opportunity to tweak your existing product or create a new one that fills an unmet need, and that may even help you win over new customers.

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When surveying ex-customers, along with finding out why they left, it’s important to ask: What do we have to do to win you back?  The answers could reveal what needs to be done to get past customers back on the side.

As a soloist or micro business owner, you may not have enough ex-customers to run a big survey in the way large organisations do, but that actually puts you in a better position as you can spend some time talking in depth to a few customers and gain more detailed feedback. 

Have you ever spoken to a customer who has not done business with you for a while? Has it been an enlightening exercise?