Keywords
Citation
Collins, A.L. (2002), "Customer Win‐Back: How to Recapture Lost Customers – and Keep Them Loyal", Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 19 No. 3, pp. 280-282. https://doi.org/10.1108/jcm.2002.19.3.280.3
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
In the high stakes, fast‐paced marketplace of today, losing customers to the competition is a major blow to the success of a company. Realizing this much overlooked problem, the authors created a comprehensive survival guide, packed with real‐life solutions and strategies to retain and win back valuable consumers.
The book emphasizes the necessity of managing customer defection because of its dire economic impact: “ … when a long‐term customer leaves, his defection adversely affects the firm’s bottom‐line profitability, and … this profitability deficit is not offset simply by recruiting a new customer. Therefore, using win‐back measures to extend the profit contribution of a mature, high‐value customer who has defected or is on the brink of defection is crucial to any firm’s profit management success” (p. 10).
Customer Win‐Back is divided into two parts, with ten detailed chapters:
Part One: How to win back lost customers
The first chapter, “Why customer win‐back is crucial to your success” teaches marketers to be aware of the dangers of overlooking or mismanaging lost patrons. This chapter also includes the cold, hard facts on customer defection, and how much more cost‐effective it is to save a consumer than to acquire a new one.
Chapter 2, “Managing the big three – acquisition, retention, and win‐back”, explains the integrated relationships of the three stages of the consumer life cycle. It provides tools to weed out valuable consumers from those that are costing you money and wasting your time.
In the third chapter, “Winning back a lost customer”, there is a discussion of the SLTV (second lifetime value) of a consumer after win‐back occurs and the earning potential associated with that value. Detailed strategies for reconstituting consumer trust are provided.
Chapter 4, “How to save a customer on the brink of defection”, outlines the practice of CPR (comprehend, propose, and respond) to consumer loyalty emergencies and instructs readers on how to spot a customer at risk early enough to prevent defection.
Chapter 5, “Mobilizing and managing a win‐back team”, is for when your company is in a defection emergency and needs fast and furious measures. It guides you through the process of forming and managing temporary and permanent win‐back teams. Strong emphasis is placed on personalized customer service aspects of win‐back teams.
Part two: “Making your company defection‐proof
The first chapter in part two, “When you think your customer is safe from defection”, warns marketers never to become complacently over‐confident about their consumer loyalty. The authors advise keeping in sync with customers’ evolving needs and going above and beyond the call of duty to keep your customers satisfied.
Chapter 7, “Building a customer information system that drives loyalty”, provides detailed instructions on how to create a customer information system (CIS) for your company, from what knowledge to gather to how to keep your data collectors happy.
In Chapter 8, “Targeting prospects with strong loyalty potential”, marketers are trained to choose consumers who will prove to be most lucrative for their company, and it lists strategies to court and win those preferred customers. Readers are warned against the “Casanova complex”, the reputation of a “love ’em and leave ’em”’ company, which can be remedied by offering personalized customer service and incentive programs.
Chapter 9, “Leveraging the power of customer‐focused teams”, conveys the benefits of a team culture to keep on top of customer satisfaction along with the personal/professional achievement potential for team members. It lays out a plan for restructuring your company to a team‐based organization.
The final chapter, “How to build a fiercely loyal staff”, reinforces the point that staff defection shares the same negative effects as customer defection. The chapter offers ways to keep your best employees dedicated, as staff loyalty breeds consumer loyalty.
Each chapter includes a plethora of examples, where strategies discussed are applied to real situations in well‐known, respected companies. While they are excellent proof to back up the points made by Griffin and Lowenstein, the examples are somewhat overused, as each strategy is exhaustively discussed. The first section of the book is informative and eye‐opening for marketers who previously had overlooked the consequences of consumer defection. This part outlines many concepts of winning back the customers you want, and tells you exactly how to achieve those results. However, the second section seems redundant, as many of the concepts and strategies discussed in the first five chapters are rehashed and applied to even more real‐world examples. The parts on e‐marketing are useful, but not as thorough as the sections on marketing traditional companies. It seems that the book was mostly written for a mature audience who is behind in current marketing trends, or is employed at a well‐established company that needs a jump‐start and does not know where to begin. All in all, it is an extremely detailed handbook, in which marketers can find a multitude of defection situations, and proven strategies that can be applied easily to virtually any company.