Six Steps to Combating Competitor-Driven Cancellations

Customers cancel for many different reasons but some, like moves or financial issues, you may not have control over.   Are you doing everything you can to be sure your customers are not going to competitors?

Here are six steps to combating competitor-driven cancellations.

Know your market. Information is the key to combating competitor-driven cancellations. You should gather information about your market, your competitors, and your customers regularly. Who are your main competitors and what are they offering? A special subset of competitor cancellations consists of customers who are switching to services offered by local cable companies as part of a bundle of services. Once you understand your competitors, you can communicate the differentiator of your service (quality, range of services, and/or price) to strengthen their loyalty and combat the risk of cancellations.

Know why your customers are cancelling. Are your competitors running a new sales campaign? Are you losing customers to door-to-door sales? Once you know the reasons behind the competitor-driven cancellations, you can decide what measures to take to combat them.

Know your company. Are your service offerings competitive?  If you’re not offering the latest services and technologies (home automation, video, or wireless, for example), consider doing so.  If you do offer them, let your customers know, so they don’t go looking for those services from a competitor.  Don’t wait for your customers to call you for upgrades or new technology, actively market them. If you wait, your competitor may come knocking on your customers’ doors and offer to install a new system for free.

Provide extraordinary service.  All the sales and marketing strategies in the world won’t prevent competition-based attrition if the real issue is a less-than-excellent customer experience. To protect your account base from your competitors, you must fulfill your brand proposition by giving your customers exactly what you promised, and then giving them more. Give them an extraordinary customer experience.

Connect and communicate. Every interaction with a customer is another chance to earn that customer’s loyalty.  One way to build customer loyalty is to use those interactions to provide relevant, timely information (information designed to educate rather than sell) to your customers, for free.  Use e-mails, newsletters, bill inserts, customer-focused areas on your website, and social media to connect and engage with your customers.

Sell with the customer in mind. For many homeowners, buying a home security system is an important investment and a long-term commitment, yet many customers cancel at the end of their initial contract period. This cancellation may be attributed to the purchase of a system that they did not want, need or understand, resulting in non-use of the system.  Building a sales program that focuses on the customer’s wants and needs, rather than on the contract or the sale, gives you a better chance of attracting and keeping loyal customers.

For more information on combating attrition, read our whitepaper, Attrition: The Silent Killer.