There are a whole host of reasons why one of your customers may become lapsed over a period of time. If you just choose to forget about them, you could be shooting yourself in the foot.

Keep reading to discover why you shouldn’t give up on lapsed customers and how you should keep in touch with them.

Reasons to Keep in Touch

A lapsed customer doesn’t necessarily mean an unhappy customer. There could be any number of reasons why someone has stopped ordering from you or using your services. If you just accept the fact they’ve stopped using you and don’t bother to find out why, you’re missing out on valuable information.

Here’s a real life example that happened with one of my clients.

They had a customer who regularly used their pest control services in a hotel they were the manager of. A few months went by without hearing from them which was unusual.

I advised my client to contact the person to ask why they’d stopped using his services. He was told there was now a new manager at the hotel. Not only did he manage to pick up the contract for the hotel again by speaking to the new manager, he was also able to find out where the previous manager had gone to work.

It turned out he’d gone to work at another local hotel and planned on using my client’s services, but the need just hadn’t arisen so far.

To summarise, it pays to keep in touch as you never really know why a customer has lapsed until you ask them.  

How to keep in touch with lapsed customers

In many cases it’s easier to get a lapsed customer to order from you again than it is to go out and win new clients.

Here are just some ideas on how to keep in touch with lapsed customers:

1)      Call them

As in the example above, making a phone call can be a great way to find out what’s going on. Many people are apprehensive about doing this because they automatically assume the lapsed customer is annoyed for some reason. What’s the worst that could happen? If they are annoyed, they’ll tell you and you’ll have the opportunity to learn from it.

2)      Email them

Sending a personalised email to a lapsed customer can also prove beneficial. Of course an email is easier to ignore than a phone call, but is useful when someone is hard to get hold off. There’s nothing wrong with being honest in your email; just ask politely if there’s a reason why they haven’t been in touch for a while.

3)      Tweet them

If your lapsed customer is on Twitter, send them a DM asking if everything’s okay. If you look at their Twitter feed, you may find a clue as to why they haven’t ordered from you lately. Maybe they’ve been ill, found a new supplier, or just busy with company restructuring.

4)      Pop in

When a local customer has lapsed, you could always pop in to see them. Just stop by and say you were passing. Even if they have found another supplier and tell you this, you can at least discover why they switched – maybe you’re too expensive or your products/service is no longer suitable.

5)      Comment on one of their blog posts

If a lapsed customer has a regularly updated blog, you could comment on that. Putting on a well thought out, useful comment will jog their memory about you. This may prompt them into getting back in touch with you.

If you liked this article, please share it on Twitter via the button below.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 14th, 2013 at 11:49 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.