How to Lose Clients

Ever had a client experience that made you vow never to go there again?

You’re certainly not alone in that, and a company can make spectacular mistakes that have customers running for the hills.

But not all mistakes are equal.

Some companies mess up badly and their clients understand, forgive them and become even more loyal. What’s their secret?

Hiding Makes it Worse

I once hired a designer who would not communicate with me. I’d send her messages – plural - and she would not reply. I asked for timeframes and she ignored the question. And I was very unhappy about that.

I’m not going to rant about the service, that’s not my point here. I‘d rather highlight why we would have such a strong negative reaction to being ignored. It’s the meaning behind the action.

Ignoring my question said ‘You are not important, I’m not going to bothering answering. I don’t care what effect this has on you or your business’. Even though that’s not the intention, it’s what the customer hears.

It also traps the customer; I can’t make certain business decisions without the information about delivery times. People love to have choices and hate feeling trapped.

Proactively informing me of a problem would have said ‘I value you and give you an opportunity to make a decision based on this new information’.

Answering my question about delivery times would have said ‘I see you and understand your concerns. Your situation is important to me’.

A mistake reported without excuses or blame, with the admission of the error can be tough to do. It is a vulnerable move opening you up for criticism. However, customers also respect that because you’re demonstrating more concern about them than you are about yourself.

The customer hears ‘you value me’.

Going Deeper

To understand this, we need to dig more deeply in human behaviour and psychology. Human society had, and still has, a tribal element. We want to belong; we want to be part a group where we will be safe, supported and cared for. In the modern day, we look for that sense of belonging in our family, home town, country, special interest groups and sports teams.

But this is far more than simply a want. Belonging taps into our biological survival; ancient society survived through cooperation, sharing resources and mutual protection.

It was extremely difficult for a lone human to survive in the wild, so we’re wired to want inclusion in our tribe. Being shunned by your tribe meant almost certain death.

Indeed as we are completely dependent upon our ‘tribe’, and we know at a deep, unconscious level that our survival requires us to be included in and important to our tribe.

The result is that we are especially sensitive to being ignored, and it’s more than simply not liking it. Being ignored makes us feel unimportant, unvalued and tickles our survival instincts. We hate it.

Think of a child who acts out; their behaviour says ‘I would prefer negative attention to be ignored’.

Nor is it just a jungle survival response, we react the same way in modern day interactions. Everywhere we go we want to feel included and valued, not consciously, but we sit up and pay attention when it’s missing.

The Understandable Silence

With my designer, it was clear that she was struggling and the project was going to be late. And it was also clear that she did not want to tell me.

It’s easy to see why. People don’t like bearing bad news and can be afraid of conflict and criticism. So they avoid saying anything at all until they can bring good news. But the phrase ‘no news is good news’ does not apply when a customer wants your attention.

Possibly she was worried that if she told me how late it would be then I would cancel my order. That would likely have happened, but I would have respected her honesty and concern for my choices. I would have considered using her services in the future.

Even though I understood why she was not responding (her fear of my response or the consequences), and I knew why I had a negative reaction to being ignored (primal fear of being isolated), I still felt annoyed.

As I saw her promote new projects online, make press announcements and could only think ‘ok when are you going to get round to my work?’

Gone Forever

When the designer finally delivered the project, it was beautifully done, great quality and value.

And when she asked whether I would join her subscription programme I politely declined. In my head, the answer was ‘Hell no!’ I never wanted to work with her again.

Mistakes aren’t the problem in themselves, devaluing your customers is the real issue.

No matter how brilliant your product or service is, or how great the quality or value, if you ignore your customers, you lose.

Tara Halliday is a Transformational Coach and helps people make big changes in their lives to feel calm, fearless and invincible. She’s still human and gets twinges of irritation when her primal survival drives get tweaked.