odd question i know, but if you'll hang in a few seconds i will gladly explain the admittedly distant relationship between the two.

many times as i grow older and the noise of life seems to overtake my memories of the good ole days, i find myself doing things that i used to do as a kid, and these simple acts bring back long-forgotten, yet fond memories. today, as i was perusing the fridge to see what was the easiest thing a hungry, lazy man could put together to tie over my ever-present appetite until dinner, i noticed three simple elements that encouraged a smile to slowly widen across my face: bread, mayonnaise, and kraft singles.

ah, those were the days. a rough summer day of swimming, baseball, and bike riding, and then on home to enjoy the fixin's of an artfully made mayonnaise and cheese sandwich. so, today as the nostalgia swept over me and i fearlessly dived into my first bite, i realized something was amiss.

after some serious analytics, i discovered that the addition of a beautiful wife to my life had made some changes to my cheese and mayonnaise sandwich. you see, she likes healthy food. the once loved soft, white Ironkids bread had been replaced by wheat bread with 134 added grains, which resulted in some crunchiness with every bite.

this was not a cheese and mayonnaise sandwich. it almost was, but the wheaty impostor just didn't cut it, even though we call it bread as well.

customer feedback is three major elements: surveys, analytics and actions, and closing the loop. according to Gartner, 95% of companies collect feedback, 35% analyze and use the feedback, and only 5% tell their customers what changes they made.

where does your company fit in? even if you say you use customer feedback, are you generalizing the term? just the same as wheat bread is no substitute for white bread, collecting feedback and doing nothing with it is not using customer feedback.

the most common reason only 5% of companies actually relay to their customers how they are using their feedback is that it is a process that can be difficult to put into play. however, technology has come to save the day once again, turning this tough process into a simple application.

do you close the loop with your customer? or do you substitute wheat bread for white bread and call it a cheese and mayonnaise sandwich?

if you are looking for someone to help you close the loop with your customers, i'm your huckleberry.

the new buzz words are clear: customer experience, customer loyalty, customer advocacy, etc. we all now know what we should be doing in theory to retain customers and build our revenues. we focus on the fact that it costs 7 to 10 times more to gain a new customer than keeping the oldies.

but, just for a few minutes let’s examine the true cost of losing a customer. it only starts with the fact that we no longer see their money.

i’m going to write about an ongoing problem i have with one of my vendors. now, normally i never talk trash (because usually i use the opportunity to gain the problem vendor as a customer), but i have given every chance for this company to fix a simple problem. i can’t even get a response. so, without naming names (T-MOBILE), i will spell out the true cost of losing me as a customer, or even worse, holding me hostage as a customer.

my account with T-Mobile has been active for over 10 years (that is 3 times longer than i have known my wife!). i’m a perfect customer. never leave. pay my bills on time, etc. however, about a year ago i used my upgrade “discount” to buy my wife and i brand spanking new, state-of-the-art, T-Mobile Wings. these wings are absolute garbage. i have been through over 7 phones that have failed due to bad touch screens, no signal, and other unexplainable defects. this phone has done everything possible to make me angry short of calling my mom and letting her know the things that i do that i shouldn’t.

now, maybe i just have the worst luck in the world with phones, or maybe the phone heard a few things that i said about it when it was pretending to be broke down, and now it has it out for me, and tells his new replacement friends that are en route via a $20 FedEx package what a jerk i am. as far as the customer is concerned, this doesn’t matter.

T-Mobile refuses to replace the phone with anything better than something your 10 year old would be embarrassed to carry (imagine Zach Morris and his first mobile phone). whether i am right or wrong matters little. it’s my expectations versus reality.

now, let’s examine the true cost of losing me. i am calling them next week to pay my cancellation fees. they had me on contract for another 12 months at $200 per month. so, $2400 – cancellation fee = $1900 lost. that’s the easy equation.

before we can determine the other costs involved, let’s go through a day in the life of Angry Joe Customer (me). today, i spent over 90 minutes on the phone with T-Mobile. my favorite part of the day is my early morning coffee and planning step by step my calls, appointments, etc. for the day. as nice as the girl was at T-Mobile, i didn’t want to talk to her, but i had no choice as my phone didn’t work.

after having all of my calls forwarded to my house phone as to not miss any, i realized that my trip to the gym would have to be without my phone, as well as the grocery store, and everywhere else i planned to go that day. i’m ashamed to say it, but this is quite limiting for me.

after my trip to the gym, i came home and returned all of my missed phone calls. four, to be exact. do you think i told them exactly why i wasn’t at my phone? of course i did. and i told them the problems i have had for a year now. there is 4 people right there that i guarantee will think twice about using T-Mobile. hmmm…..opportunity cost….4 people times $1200 per year would equal $4800, right?

now, multiply the $4800 times the number of times my phone has gone down and i’ve had to explain why i’m unable to be reached….that would be 7 x $4800, or $33,600.

ok. starting to look a little more expensive than the original $1900 they would be losing with me? if we then take into account that i tell people how i feel about T-Mobile every chance that i get, this is an astronomical loss.

not to mention that now i am sitting here writing a blog about it. i have 4,366 people in my Linkedin network alone, and each connection will get an e-mail about my new blog post. the internet has changed things. a company cannot afford this.

my point was not to bash T-Mobile, which admittedly was a bonus that i accomplished in this blog (i feel better, how about you?). my point is that companies need to see the true cost of losing a customer.

granted, not all of them will be angry when they leave a company, but they did have a reason for leaving, which means at best they will say, “yes, they did a good job, but i found this over here which was even better.”

the truth is you can’t keep everyone. but, it’s always worth a try. keep your customers.

if you need someone to tell you exactly which customers you are at risk of losing, i’m your huckleberry.

so, with all my technical background and experience on the web, I must admit this is my first time posing as a blogger. so here goes....

i spend countless hours of my day building and maintaining customer loyalty programs for mid-size through f500 companies. this involves many fancy terms, advanced analytics that will make any geek too excited for sleep, and, admittedly, sometimes outright over-complication of a very simple concept. granted, the latest and greatest feedback technology definitely has a place in our world of business, and provides measurements of a formerly abstract element: our customers and what they think about us. i say abstract because it's attempting to measure something that involves more variables than we can imagine: human behavior.

life was so much more simple in the fourth grade, when we sent our best friend to a prospect of the opposite sex with a note that said, "do you like me? circle one. yes...no...maybe..."

it truly is this simple.

i am your best friend that you send to your prospect, and i present the note. i then take their note, and, of course, i run directly to the bathroom to take a sneak peak at their answer even though they folded and scotch taped it tightly. i take the sheet of wide-line notebook paper, which is by this time crumpled and smeared, back to you and let you see the result. now, even though i know what the note says, i let you unfold it, and observe as you are either pleasantly surprised, confused, or you are faced with the idea that perhaps your offerings weren't quite everything you thought they were. when it's my note, i tend to think, "who wouldn't circle yes?"

the next step, good or bad, is for me to wait patiently for the flood of questions that will undoubtedly ensue. was the prospect smiling? do they like me but they might have a crush on someone else? is there a chance they might like me next week? i mean, fourth graders are fickle, this could change, right? is there something i could improve on to change this maybe to a yes, and this no to a maybe? (at this point boys are considering the whole gym thing, and girls are getting curious about makeup.)

this is where the messenger proves to be a valuable asset to winning your true love of the week. i can relate to you more than what the simple answer says. of course i will do it tactfully, but i will be sure to tell you if the prospect cringed when they saw the note, circled something in a hurry, and walked off in a somewhat embarrassed huff. or, i can let you know how they flashed an interested, flattered smile, thought carefully a few seconds, put their undecided pen to the paper more than once, and then circled maybe for lack of a better answer. in a perfect world, they would all circle yes, but most prospects have more than one note in their hand.

they are only going to say yes to the best, and maybe or no to the rest.

this is where the work starts. it's simple work, but not necessarily easy. if they circled no, we find out why by asking the messenger. did they say they didn't like my new bowl cut? did they not like getting their hair pulled on the playground? so, after evaluation, we make some changes. we go get the flat top hair cut instead. we try complimenting their new pencil topper instead of pelting them in the face with the dodgeball. and we go back and ask again. trial and error on a continuous basis.

if they say maybe, we once again find out the circumstances. they are interested enough to give us some feedback, so we ask them what would turn the maybe into a yes, and then we do that. we just improve our operations.

and if they say yes, we go back and tell everyone who helped us get where we are thanks by giving them one of our laffy-taffies, their choice of flavor (in our world this is called employee incentives).

and then we do the whole process over again. simple, is it not?

i find myself often so caught up in the amazing technology and the analytics that i forget the foundation on which this all begins.

do my customers like me? yes, no, or maybe.

find out why. change the no's to maybe's, the maybe's to yes's, and reward the people who helped us get the yes's. repeat.

if you're looking for a best friend to deliver the note and analyze results, i'm your huckleberry.