Reviving Customers

Do you have customers that need to be recovered, reawakened, or revived? If yes, which is common for most businesses, decide exactly what you’d like to achieve with a specific customer. Write it down. Then make a list of that customer’s current beliefs related to you and your organization, focusing on the beliefs that could prevent you from realizing what you’d like to achieve with this customer. For each belief that might be an obstacle to reviving your customer, answer this question: What is the belief I would like this customer to hold? Of course, this may require one or more in-depth discussions with your customer. Once you’ve zeroed-in on the major beliefs you need to change in order to re-engage your customer, decide on what new customer experiences you’re going to create to make it happen. Create the new experiences and test for movement—don’t stop until your customer is recovered, reawakened, and revived.

Here’s how one client did it. A senior account manager for a business service organization approached one of her disgruntled customers with a simple message: “I know you’ve developed some rather negative beliefs about us over the past several months and I’m here to find out exactly what those beliefs are, so we can change them.” Being pleasantly surprised by the account manager’s candidness and apparent commitment to fix things, the customer openly discussed his negative beliefs and the experiences that had created them. Surprising the customer once again, the account manager said, “These are not beliefs we want you to hold, so we’re going to create a whole new set of experiences for you—experiences that will lead to new, very positive beliefs about us.” For the next several minutes the account manager discussed the new experiences that she and her organization were going to create in a determined effort to change the customer’s beliefs. Within weeks, the customer’s beliefs began shifting. Four months later, the customer had been completely revived. Today, the account manager is working diligently to keep it that way.

Simply stated, the beliefs your customers hold shape their purchasing decisions, their loyalty choices, and their referrals—and those beliefs won’t change unless you deal with them directly. To learn more about how to revive customers by changing their beliefs, we invite you to join the Accountability Community by visiting www.partnersinleadership.com, where you can review actual client case studies that illustrate the impact of changing customer beliefs.

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