Every company has a “customer at risk” score or ratio. Your “at risk” score is the percentage of customers who only frequent your store, restaurant, hotel, etc., out of convenience, not because they are loyal. Having a large number of customers who are not loyal is risky business.
One of best ways to determine your establishment’s “customer at risk” score is to have a conversation with a random sampling of your customers. I would suggest that you have someone from your team speak to at least 100 consumers over a period of two or three months. Here are some questions which will elicit the information you need to assess their interest and loyalty to your business:
- What made you decide to walk into our business in the first place?
- What do you like best about doing business with us?
- Do you feel that we appreciate your business?
- Have you built up a bond or relationship with any individuals working at our establishment? If so, who?
- If a competitor opened up another location close to ours, how likely would you be to check it out?
- If you were to describe how we treat our customers in one sentence, what would you say?
- If you owned this business, what would you do to insure that customers became loyal advocates and not just shopped there out of convenience?
Finding the answers to these questions will help you to assess your “customer at risk” factor. This exercise requires having a conversation with your customers; ask these types of questions via the telephone or face-to-face. If you decide to use an Internet survey or IVR to solicit this information, you have missed the point.
