How you react to these defections could be the difference between life and death for your Web business. Yet, out of the multitude of Internet companies spending millions to create new customers, few know when their customers stop coming back. Instead of continuously pouring new customers into your company, try spending some time plugging a few of the leaks with a standard process for recapturing defecting customers. You must know when a customer has ended a relationship with your company. For subscription-based businesses, it's a nonrenewal.
Transactional relationships require a little more work to follow.
Knowing a customer's average transaction size and frequency will let you identify behavior that deviates from the norm. Evaluate the value of a defection. Once a customer has left, you have to decide whether that customer is really worth keeping. Everyone in business will agree that some consumers provide more value than others and that retention of those high-value consumers is crucial. At some point, every business needs to look at its consumers not just from a standpoint of their potential value, but in terms of their impact on the cost of operations and marketing.