“Thank you for having been our customer!”
The art of actively say good-bye to customers
Customer relationship management in many companies focuses on acquiring new customers and securing the loyalty of their existing clientele. As it is well known, this is what assures business success. But that is not all. The active termination of a customer relationship, i.e., by the provider, is a component which should not be neglected as the results of a study in the Swiss telecommunications industry confirm.
Customer relationship management – the English term and its abbreviation (CRM) are commonly used in German as well – is concerned with the dealings between customers and the providers of products and services. The end of a customer relationship is fundamentally – and understandably – not a topic gladly discussed by companies. That is shown, for example, by the latest CRM study (Wolter, S./Tüscher, P./Lucco, A./Reimers, H./Hannich, F./Troesch-Jacot, M. (2009): Kundenrückgewinnungsmanagement, Status Quo in der Schweizer Unternehmerpraxis, Studie 2009/02, Zürich) from Detecon Switzerland which examines the level of maturity of the management for winning back customers in Swiss service companies. Among the other findings, the study determines that CRM in many instances does not go far enough in dealing with customers who have left the company on their own initiative. There is a similar picture for the termination of customer relationships which bring in little or no profit: This topic often reveals a gap in the companies’ CRM.
There are three core questions at the forefront of active termination management in customer relationships:
1. What advantages does professional termination management offer the company?
2. What do analysis and planning of a fair termination look like?
3. What practical implications result for termination management?
Core Question 1: What advantages does professional termination management offer the company? It should come as no surprise that the most common reasons behind a company’s termination of its customers are of financial nature. Either a customer has not paid his bill, or he is simply not profitable enough. Against this background, the direct benefits of successful termination management are revealed in three points, namely, from economic, communicative, and competitive perspectives.
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