Moments of Fallacy: Your Customers Don't Leave But Are Invited To Do So

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We get the language of customer retention and attrition all wrong. We say things like "customers abandon us," "they leave," or "they attrite." But in framing our brand's retention issues in this manner, we swap the subject and object of our sentences. We make the customer the subject and our brand the object, as if they've done something to us, but the reality is precisely the opposite. We are the subject--our organizations are the ones accountable for the customer experience (CX), for ensuring customer satisfaction, and for earning customers' loyalty and dollars. Our brand is not victimized by ungrateful customers who leave us but has a duty to create an experience that invites customers to remain.

This isn't just about language but about the way we think and act. Our mental models influence the language we use, and the language then reinforces those same mental models.

Your brand may not intentionally "fire" the customer, but make no mistake: If you neglect customer needs and expectations, ignore their feedback, consistently prioritize profit over customer satisfaction, and expect loyalty in return for mediocre and undifferentiated experiences, you may as well engrave an invitation for your customers to quit your brand. To influence customer-centric change in your organization, start with the right vocabulary and mentality. Stop blaming your customers for leaving, and embrace your obligation to offer experiences that invite customers to stay.

Another example of the way our language betrays us is the term "moment of truth," which has been popular in CX for years. The idea that your brand has some limited number of consistent and eternal "moments of truth" that are essential to every customer in every situation falls apart pretty quickly when you poke at it gently.

Any moment can be a moment of truth if your brand disappoints or harms a customer. Moreover, satisfied and loyal customers don't abruptly seek competitive solutions simply because your brand dropped the ball in one, big, predictable moment of truth; instead, you lose customers when your brand suffers a sustained loss of trust, loyalty, and satisfaction due to a series of effortful, disappointing or frustrating experiences. In the battle for customer retention, every touchpoint is a moment of truth, and the decision on which moments matter most is not yours but each customers'.

To read two examples that illustrate how brands invite customers to leave, explore brands' "last-touch attribution" issue with attrition, and begin to improve the customer-centric language and mindset at your organization, please continue reading this post on my Gartner blog.