Customer Winback

About the Authors

Jill Griffin is a renowned consultant specializing in customer loyalty and retention strategies. She is the president of the Griffin Group, based in Austin, Texas. With a background in business and marketing, Griffin has dedicated her career to helping companies understand and implement effective customer retention programs.

Michael W. Lowenstein is the Managing Director of Customer Retention Associates in Collingswood, New Jersey. He has extensive experience in consulting on customer and staff loyalty, providing insights into how businesses can improve their customer relationships and retention rates.

Main Idea

In "Customer Winback: How to Recapture Lost Customers - And Keep Them Loyal," Jill Griffin and Michael W. Lowenstein explore the often overlooked issue of customer defection. The authors argue that many businesses fail to recognize the scale and impact of customer churn. The book provides a comprehensive strategy for identifying, recapturing, and retaining lost customers, turning potential business losses into opportunities for enhanced customer loyalty and reduced acquisition costs.

Table of Contents

1. Customer Winback is Critical to Your Bottom Line Success
2. Developing Winback Strategies
3. Identifying Customer Segments
4. Customer Lifetime Value - Merging Past and Anticipated Purchases
5. Strategies for Saving a Defector
6. Strategies for Saving a Customer Who is About to Defect
7. Satisfied Customers Aren't Always Loyal Customers
8. Make Your Company Defection Proof
9. Target the Right Prospects in the First Place
10. To Create Loyal Customers, Start with Loyal Employees

Customer Winback is Critical to Your Bottom Line Success

On average, firms can lose up to 40 percent of their customers every year. This startling statistic underscores the importance of understanding and addressing customer defection. Many companies remain unaware of the scale of this issue and, as a result, do little to mitigate it. Even among those that do track customer defection rates, the prevailing assumption is that a lost customer is a lost cause.

However, research by Marketing Metrics reveals that companies have a much better chance of regaining business from former customers than acquiring new ones. On average, firms have a 60 to 70 percent chance of selling to existing customers again, a 20 to 40 percent chance of selling to previous customers, and only a 5 to 20 percent chance of turning prospects into customers. This demonstrates the significant opportunity in focusing on customer winback strategies.

“Look at an 80 percent retention rate for a college, which sounds healthy and robust. However, by the time a freshman class of 1,000 students enters its senior year with an 80 percent retention rate, there will be just over 500 students (512) remaining.” - Jill Griffin and Michael W. Lowenstein

The authors emphasize the broader impact of customer defection, noting that it can lead to decreased profits, lower employee morale, and increased hiring and training costs. By reframing customer defection as an opportunity to provide superior, individualized customer service, businesses can transform this challenge into a strategic advantage.

Developing Winback Strategies

Winning back customers is a company-wide effort that requires a new mindset from all employees. Communication is essential to establishing an effective winback program. Instead of treating acquisition and retention efforts as separate from winback strategies, businesses should integrate these functions to transform into a "loyalty laboratory."