Why do satisfied customers leave?

Episode topics

• 00:00 - Introduction
• 02:10 - Why do satisfied customers leave?
• 04:08 - When are satisfied customers driven to leave?
• 04:21 - What happens immediately after customers buy?
• 06:33 - Why do customers feel lost during onboarding?
• 08:14 - Why do customers ghost your brand?
• 10:11 - What are the costs of customer attrition?
• 11:16 - What separates satisfied customers from loyal customers?
• 12:52 - What does a remarkable experience look like?
• 17:35 - What are the two universal truths of customer retention?
• 19:51 - What's the ROI of customer retention?
• 21:47 - How do you make CX everyone's responsibility?
• 22:35 - How can CX leaders get leadership buy-in?
• 23:21 - How do you empower your frontline team?
• 24:22 - What are the future trends in customer retention?
• 26:02 - What questions should CX leaders ask themselves?
• 26:25 - What advice does Joey have for CX leaders?

Transcript

[00:00:00] Robert Zirk: Think of the effort required to acquire new customers.

[00:00:04] The marketing spend. The brand building. The campaigns.

[00:00:08] Finally, they buy.

[00:00:10] You might think that it's a closed sale and that the hard part is over, but the sale is only the beginning.

[00:00:18] Joey Coleman: 20 to 70% of new customers will leave before the 100 day anniversary.

[00:00:23] Robert Zirk: And the cost of replacing them?

[00:00:25] Brian Breslin: It's anywhere from five to 25 times more expensive to acquire a new customer than retain an existing customer.

[00:00:33] Robert Zirk: Today on Questions for now: why your newest customers are your most vulnerable — and what it takes to make them stay. I'm joined by retention experts Joey Coleman and TELUS Digital's Brian Breslin to find out: Why do satisfied customers leave?

[00:00:49]

[00:00:56] Robert Zirk: Welcome to Questions for now, a podcast from TELUS Digital where we ask today's big questions in digital customer experience. I'm Robert Zirk.

[00:01:05]

[00:01:06] Robert Zirk: Yes, you heard correctly. 20 to 70% of new customers vanish before the 100 day mark. And looking at specific industries:

[00:01:17] Joey Coleman: Software as a service: 20%. Banks: 32%. Auto mechanics: 68%. Restaurants: 40 to 70%, depending on the type of cuisine you serve.

[00:01:27] Robert Zirk: That's Joey Coleman, keynote speaker and author of Never Lose a Customer Again and Never Lose an Employee Again. He spent two decades researching customer retention across virtually every industry, and both B2B and B2C.

[00:01:42] Joey Coleman: As I've traveled to organizations around the world on all seven continents and talked to them about keeping their customers, very few of them know when their customers are leaving. They don't know why their customers are leaving. And, importantly, they don't know how quickly their customers are leaving after becoming customers.

[00:02:00] And if you don't know the answers to those questions, it's really difficult to create the relationships and the interactions that are gonna keep a customer long term.

[00:02:10] Robert Zirk: When you think about the idea of a satisfied customer leaving, it sounds like an oxymoron. After all, if a customer is satisfied, why would they leave in the first place — and especially so soon?

[00:02:24] Brian Breslin, in his role at TELUS Digital, has a track record of working with companies from fast-growing startups to global brands.

[00:02:32] From this experience working with brands, he's identified a few reasons why their seemingly satisfied customers might leave.

[00:02:40] First off, Brian has seen brands experience customer churn when there's just a better offer that appears in the market for them.

[00:02:48] Brian Breslin: It doesn't need to be a significantly better offer. If there's not really any loyalty anchoring you to a brand or a product, a slightly better offer can be enough for you to move on to something else.

[00:02:58] Robert Zirk: Another reason customers leave is a misalignment between company values and the values customers hold.

[00:03:04] Brian Breslin: A customer can be satisfied with the product, but if they're not satisfied with how the company holds themself in the world, or if the values misalign with their own, that can be enough of a reason for them to look elsewhere. We see this now all the time with brands being called out, whether it be to do with how they treat data privacy or other scandals, and people are very quick to distance themselves from brands that don't align with their own values.

[00:03:30] Robert Zirk: And finally, small problems can add up over the course of the early customer experience — to a point where it only takes one more to tip the scale.

[00:03:39] Brian Breslin: If it's one thing after the next, it all builds up and it wears you down and it ruins any goodwill that has been built. And when someone else comes in with an offer that's smoother or requires less effort, it's very easy for you to make that switch and move on.

[00:03:53] Robert Zirk: The key that underpins each of these scenarios is that satisfaction can't be confused for loyalty.

[00:03:59] Brian Breslin: Satisfaction is a fragile sort of passive state. Someone can be satisfied, but it doesn't necessarily mean they're very engaged or emotionally invested.

[00:04:08] Robert Zirk: So satisfied customers leave because satisfaction, on its own, isn't enough. But what causes a sudden churn within the first hundred days? Joey's research reveals three predictable moments when this happens.

[00:04:21] The first takes place in what Joey calls the Affirm phase of the customer journey, which is immediately after they make their purchase.

[00:04:29] Joey Coleman: Right after a customer makes a decision to do business with you — they sign on the dotted line, they hand over their hard earned cash — they begin to doubt the decision they just made.

[00:04:39] Meanwhile, your team's high fiving, celebrating, "Oh, we landed the sale! This is amazing! This is incredible!" But at your customer's office or home, they're going, "Did I make the right choice? I'm not sure. What if this doesn't work out? What if we start spending some money with them and it goes so poorly that we've gotta get out of the relationship? How do I get out of the relationship? Is it quick and easy to quit? What if my boss talks to me about this and are they gonna be frustrated that I made the decision to hire these people?" All of that fear and doubt and uncertainty about the future is happening in the mind of your customer immediately after the purchase.

[00:05:11] Robert Zirk: In other words, buyer's remorse. That feeling of doubt and anxiety immediately after you make a purchase. You wonder if you made the right choice or if you even needed to make it at all.

[00:05:23] Joey Coleman: And yet most businesses aren't even addressing it. Almost every business leader I know is familiar with the phrase "buyer's remorse", but if I ask them, "Do you have a system and a process in your business designed to address the buyer's remorse that we scientifically know every customer experiences?" Most businesses don't. It's not that we don't know it's a problem, it's that we're not deploying any resources to address it.

[00:05:44] Robert Zirk: One tactic to reduce buyer's remorse is to be responsive at every stage of the customer journey. According to research from Shopify, companies that engage with customers via live chat within a five minute window are 69% more likely to close a sale.

[00:06:01] And that same principle of quick, proactive communication also applies after the sale, when timely reassurance can prevent buyer's remorse.

[00:06:11] For example, for a customer who's made a purchase, reach out to them within hours, not days. And not with a generic "thank you for your order" email, but with specific messages of reassurance that give them full confidence that they're going to get what they paid for and they're going to be delighted with it. In this way, you remind them why they made the right choice.

[00:06:33] The second moment when customers rethink their purchase happens during onboarding — what Joey calls the Acclimate phase.

[00:06:41] And while you and your team are deeply familiar with your product or service delivery...

[00:06:46] Joey Coleman: To a brand new customer, they have no idea what it's like to do business with you. They have no idea about your cadence of communication. They have no idea when to expect deliveries. They have no idea how to do setup. They have no idea how to get up and running. They have no idea who to call if something goes wrong.

[00:07:01] And some of you may be saying, "But Joey, we outlined this in the proposal. We gave them this in the contract." They didn't read it! We're not reading any of the stuff we accept. If we, as consumers, aren't reading the things that are being put in front of us, why do we presume that our customers are reading what we're putting in front of them? They're just not.

[00:07:20] Robert Zirk: A Wyzowl study shows that more than 90% of customers believe there's room for improvement in how companies onboard new users and customers. So customers might be satisfied with the product or service itself, but they can often feel lost.

[00:07:36] To counteract this, Joey stresses the importance of clearly communicating each step of the journey.

[00:07:43] Joey Coleman: We've gotta hold their hand. We've gotta let 'em know, "Here's what we were doing for you. Here's what we're doing for you right now and here's what we're gonna do next."

[00:07:50] Robert Zirk: And Joey has a test for this.

[00:07:52] Joey Coleman: At any given point, I should be able to call any customer of yours and say, "What is the last thing Robert did for you? What is the thing he's working on for you right now? And when he's done with this, what is the next thing he's gonna work on for you?" If your customers can't answer that question, if they don't know where they are in the timeline, that's not on them. That's on us.

[00:08:14] Robert Zirk: The third reason customers leave within the first a hundred days is the quietest one.

[00:08:19] Joey Coleman: See, we often think of customers as leaving in a huff or a tizzy. They flip over the table, "That's it! I'm done with you guys! I'm never doing business with you again!" And sometimes that's how customers leave. But more often, customers leave by ghosting us. They just decide not to come back. They decide not to renew.

[00:08:38] Robert Zirk: And whether you're at a B2B company or a B2C with a subscription model, this would likely take your team by surprise. After all, there weren't any complaints. The customer seemed satisfied. So your team jumps into action. They attempt to get a meeting on the calendar trying to win the customer back.

[00:08:59] Joey Coleman: Friends, at that point, it's too late. The reason many customers leave is because they didn't feel like we cared if they stayed. There was nothing that we were communicating with them, nothing that we were doing with them. None of the interactions we were having left them feeling wanted, left them feeling appreciated, left them feeling valued.

[00:09:20] Robert Zirk: Joey warns that simply delivering the product or service isn't enough. On its own, it's expected. It's transactional.

[00:09:28] Joey Coleman: So we were transactional and we're surprised that they became transactional and went with a competitor who has a lower price? "No, Joey, it was about relationships." Oh, great! What were we doing that was relational? If you want relationships, you have to be relational in your behaviors.

[00:09:44] Robert Zirk: So those are the three moments when customers leave.

[00:09:47] First, right after they buy: buyer's remorse sets in and you don't have a strategy to address it.

[00:09:54] After that, during onboarding: when the customer lacks clarity about what happens next,

[00:10:00] And lastly, the drift: a customer who feels like they aren't valued or that they're just another transaction will quietly walk away in pursuit of something better.

[00:10:11] Those three moments, within the span of a hundred days, can also have ramifications beyond just a lost customer, as Brian explained.

[00:10:21] Brian Breslin: It's anywhere from five to 25 times more expensive to acquire a new customer than retain an existing customer, so when you are losing customers, you're increasing your spend exponentially on the marketing side and the sales side just to stand still or stay in the same place.

[00:10:37] Robert Zirk: The second cost is to your brand's reputation, as lost customers often become critics.

[00:10:43] Brian Breslin: With social media and everything today, when somebody leaves, not only are you losing that network effect of people talking positively about your brand or product, but you're also at risk of them sharing negative stories of why they left and creating negative sort of social proof of what's wrong with your brand or with your product.

[00:11:00] Robert Zirk: And the third cost is to your team.

[00:11:03] Brian Breslin: If you're working in a company and there's a huge customer churn rate, it's a bit demoralizing for your frontline team members. They feel like they're constantly dealing with unhappy customers trying to win them back and it creates burnout and turnover in your employees as well.

[00:11:16] Robert Zirk: We've covered the moments and consequences that separate satisfied customers from loyal ones.

[00:11:23] So how can you create customer loyalty?

[00:11:26] Joey says it comes down to something most businesses overlook: how you make people feel.

[00:11:32] That starts by creating an experience that goes beyond good enough. An experience that's remarkable.

[00:11:41] Joey Coleman: If we look at the word "remarkable" and we dissect that word, it means worthy of talking about. Worthy of making a remark about, rising to the level that I've gotta tell someone. What are you doing in your day-to-day business that that makes a customer say, "Oh my gosh, that was amazing! That was incredible. That was unexpected. They went above and beyond."

[00:12:05] Robert Zirk: Joey cautions that a remarkable experience doesn't necessarily mean you've gotta spend more to deliver it.

[00:12:12] Rather, a remarkable experience is about going beyond the transaction and cultivating a relationship with your customers.

[00:12:20] Joey Coleman: Remarkable experiences are more about the feeling than the cost. They're more about the emotion than the expense. That's the secret. We've gotta think about "How do we want our customers to feel throughout the journey?" instead of "What do we wanna say to them? What do we wanna do with them? What do we wanna give them?" Great! Those things are relevant, but more importantly is "How do I want you to feel at every step in your relationship with me? And am I doing things proactively to increase the likelihood that you will feel that emotion?"

[00:12:52] Robert Zirk: Joey shared an example of what this looks like in practice.

[00:12:56] Joey Coleman: There's a company called Zogics and they create products that are used by gyms and health clubs and spas around the world. They're an ecommerce business. So you go online, you order some products, and you get the box in the mail. Now, when your first order ships, you get a brief little survey before it even arrives that says, "Hey, the package is on its way. Three quick questions."

[00:13:17] So let me ask you, Robert: sweet or savory?

[00:13:19] Robert Zirk: Sweet.

[00:13:20] Joey Coleman: Sweet. Hot or cold beverage?

[00:13:22] Robert Zirk: Cold.

[00:13:23] Joey Coleman: Any one in particular?

[00:13:24] Robert Zirk: Root beer.

[00:13:24] Joey Coleman: Root beer! I love it! Root beer's my favorite. Brilliant! Dog or cat? I know the answer to this one, but let's play along.

[00:13:30] Robert Zirk: My dog Scoot made an on-screen cameo at the beginning of our recording.

[00:13:34] (Scoot barks.)

[00:13:34] Robert Zirk: Dog.

[00:13:35] Joey Coleman: Okay, great.

[00:13:36] Robert Zirk: So let's use my example and say you answer the three questions: sweet, cold beverage — root beer specifically, and dog.

[00:13:44] Your first order arrives. Everything's fine, and the product is great. You're not even thinking about the quick survey from before. But when your second order arrives...

[00:13:56] Joey Coleman: Inside that order, there's a little handwritten thank you note that says, "Hey Robert, will you give these to Scoot, please?" And it includes three little dog treats.

[00:14:06] You can't see that Robert's face just lit up like a Christmas tree. He was like, "What?! Presents for Scoot?" Scoot's in the background, jumping up and down and going "Presents for me?! This is amazing!"

[00:14:16] Now, let's say the fourth order comes along, and I've noticed that Robert's increasing his order, and I really like this. And I send Robert a six pack of root beer with a little note that says, "Hey man, thanks so much for giving us a try and continuing to do business with us. We are so excited that you've decided to make us your provider of gym towels," or whatever we're selling.

[00:14:35] Now we're having an entirely different interaction. This simple. And how did we get to that? With a quick little three survey question with little follow ups afterwards. Like, "Oh, specifically, what cold beverage? Oh, dog? What's the dog's name?" So now I know Robert likes root beer, Robert likes sweets, and Robert has a dog named Scoot. I can take that information to create remarkable experiences for him going forward till the end of time, because we will continue to be able to deepen the relationship and learn more things about him and create these kind of remarkable experiences.

[00:15:08] Robert Zirk: Remarkable, doesn't have to be expensive, either.

[00:15:11] Think about the cost of a few dog treats or a six pack of root beer.

[00:15:15] Joey Coleman: When you find things that people love, they connect in a completely different way.

[00:15:19] It's a different level of interaction. Every one of your customers is a human. Every human has dozens of things that are unique about them that you can connect with.

[00:15:29] Robert Zirk: Research from Digital Silk indicates that 76% of customers say they'd stay loyal to brands that are capable of connecting with them on a personal level.

[00:15:39] Joey reminds CX leaders not to think of creating a remarkable customer experience as a task, but rather, as a philosophy.

[00:15:48] Joey Coleman: What I mean is that all too often, businesses, when they think about "we need to be more remarkable", will work to figure out three to five ways to be more remarkable this quarter. Instead of saying, "What is it like to have a philosophy of being remarkable? How can I be remarkable every day, in every interaction? It requires work, and in some ways, the thought of that can be rather daunting, but the execution of that is actually invigorating.

[00:16:20] We've all had this experience. We do something special for someone. It makes their eyes light up. What does that do? It energizes us. It doesn't deplete us. Smiling at someone and they smile back doesn't cost us anything. In fact, it refuels us to smile at the next person. We're missing the opportunity to double back down into a philosophy of caring, a philosophy of showing people that they matter, telling people that they matter, appreciating them, valuing them, listening to them, seeing them.

[00:16:53] Robert Zirk: Now you might be thinking dog treats and root beer have nothing to do with gym supplies. So if the reason I'm there is to purchase supplies for a gym, why not offer me a discount code instead? After all, it would be easier to scale.

[00:17:08] Joey Coleman: If I were to give you a 5% discount on your next gym order, that doesn't feel remarkable or special. It feels yeah.

[00:17:16] If I were to give you a 10% discount, you're like, "Eh, probably not." 50%. "Ugh." 75%, you're like, "Are they going out of business? What is going on? They gotta move some product that you're trying to buy stuff," right? But if I send you a six pack of root beer, then you're like, "Oh my gosh, I matter. They care about me."

[00:17:35] Robert Zirk: When you transcend the transactional to become remarkable, you turn satisfied customers into loyal advocates. Joey's Zogics example shows the emotional side, the personal connection, the feeling. And that emotional connection is one of two universal truths of customer retention that Brian identified.

[00:17:57] Brian Breslin: So how do you make people feel connected to your brand or part of your brand? Apple, for example, do this. They make people feel like their iPhone is part of their identity in a way, and this builds an emotional bond that's harder to break.

[00:18:08] Robert Zirk: Research conducted by Motista reveals that customers who form emotional connections with brands demonstrate a 306% higher lifetime value over satisfied customers who hold no emotional connection. The other part of this equation is that brands need to continually focus on reducing customer effort — what Brian highlights as the largest predictor of disloyalty.

[00:18:33] Brian Breslin: So how hard does a customer have to work to get their problem solved or to make a purchase or to find information? The brands that relentlessly focus on reducing this effort tend to win. An example is Amazon's one-click checkout, which has been around forever, but is still a gold standard in that kind of effortless experience.

[00:18:49] Robert Zirk: Brian shared another example of an effortless experience in action via a SaaS company TELUS Digital supports with customer service delivery. One of their customers...

[00:19:00] Brian Breslin: ...was trying to use their piece of software and get over this difficult part that they just couldn't figure out.

[00:19:06] But what happened with this company was the person stopped trying to do what they were figuring out, and then they had received an email with a two minute video showing them how to do exactly what they were trying to do, and then also a link to book a 15 minute call if they needed more help with an expert for that piece of the product that could walk them through it.

[00:19:24] Robert Zirk: Remember how Joey mentioned that moments of uncertainty or frustration in the onboarding phase can cause customer attrition? Brian's example here of proactive support shows how you can turn a potentially negative situation into an emphatically positive one.

[00:19:41] Brian Breslin: It was low effort. It was personal in the way it was framed to them and it turned that moment of frustration into a moment of delight and empowerment.

[00:19:51] Robert Zirk: When customers feel delighted, they stay.

[00:19:54] And when they stay, the numbers are staggering, as Joey noted.

[00:19:58] Joey Coleman: Research out of Harvard Business School and Bain & Company, the organization that came up with Net Promoter Score, shows that if we can get 5% of the customers who are gonna leave to stay — just 5% — it will increase profits 25 to 100%. Not revenues, profits.

[00:20:17] Robert Zirk: Joey explained how that math works. You're running your business at a profit, so the first dollars your customer spends cover your operating costs. Once those are covered...

[00:20:28] Joey Coleman: ...each additional dollar that customer spends is more profitable.

[00:20:32] The longer you're in a relationship with that customer, the more profitable it becomes. Why? You're able to serve them more effectively, more efficiently. You know what you like. There's less time to get approval. You make a recommendation. They say, "We trust you. This is great. Let's do it."

[00:20:47] You spend a lot less time in the back and forth that's not generating revenue and a lot more time in the moving forward on delivering your products or your services. So the longer we keep a customer, the more profitable they are.

[00:20:59] Robert Zirk: But if you're not paying attention to retaining your customers after acquiring them — especially when they leave before your marketing expenses have been recovered — the inverse applies.

[00:21:10] Joey Coleman: Now the next person that joins, we've gotta get them to profitable and then we have to run them at profitable for a while to make up for the loss for the other person that left before we brought them in. And it just creates this cycle where businesses are struggling to keep their head above water when they're not making the investment in the relationships to keep the relationships for the long term.

[00:21:33] Robert Zirk: Joey likened this to the difference between building long-term relationships and constantly having to put out fires.

[00:21:40] No sales, marketing or CX teams want to feel like they're in that latter category.

[00:21:47] Implementing this philosophy across an organization isn't simple, but it is achievable and Brian believes it comes down to culture.

[00:21:56] Brian Breslin: Brands that see the customer experience, not just as a department, but as the entire company's responsibility, they tend to do better because their product teams use CX metrics to prioritize features, the marketing team measures retention, not just acquisition, and they tend to empower their frontline employees to give solutions and resolve problems rather than having to just escalate things up the chain.

[00:22:19] Robert Zirk: Like Joey mentioned earlier, CX shouldn't be thought of as a task, but as a philosophy, one that needs to be the responsibility of the entire organization. Making that shift requires buy-in from senior leadership.

[00:22:35] So how do you rally the C-suite around customer experience?

[00:22:39] Brian advises leaders to stop talking about CX in ways that only a CX team will understand.

[00:22:47] Brian Breslin: Start speaking the language of the C-suite, which of course is revenue, cost and risk. So, instead of saying we need to improve CSAT or NPS, you could say something like, "Our data shows that customers with a higher NPS have a longer life cycle of X percent and they churn lower by X amount." And then you say, "Investing 10 million in CX will reduce churn by 2% and generate X amount of million in retained revenue over the next 18 months."

[00:23:14] Robert Zirk: When you demonstrate business impact, you're proposing an investment with measurable returns.

[00:23:21] With support from the C-suite, you can further empower your frontline team members to create remarkable experiences.

[00:23:28] Brian Breslin: It's so important to remember that the frontline team members hear the customer's problem firsthand every single day. So you have to give them space to give you that feedback so you can turn it into actionable outcomes.

[00:23:42] Robert Zirk: To build that space, Brian suggests creating dedicated channels where employees can send their ideas. But that's just the first step.

[00:23:51] Brian Breslin: You need to implement a feedback loop, and with a feedback loop, you need it to go the whole way, so when someone submits an idea, they need to know when it was received, when it was reviewed and what the outcomes are.

[00:24:02] It can't just disappear into the unknown. And then the final part is to celebrate and reward team members who contribute ideas that have great effects to the company.

[00:24:12] Robert Zirk: That's how you build a culture where your team has the autonomy to create the kinds of experiences that turn satisfied customers into loyal advocates.

[00:24:22] As customer expectations evolve, so does the challenge of customer retention. Brian sees three trends gaining prominence. The first is that brands will need to be proactive in their personalization strategies, as customers now expect companies to better understand and predict their needs.

[00:24:41] Brian Breslin: The companies who can't keep up with that expectation of the users are really gonna fall behind very quickly. Ultimately, retention will be about the brand that make my life most seamlessly automated, in a sense.

[00:24:54] Robert Zirk: Think back to the example of the SaaS company that sent a walkthrough video before the customer even asked for help.

[00:25:01] The second trend is an alignment in values, as Brian alluded to earlier on.

[00:25:07] Brian Breslin: Customers are gonna more and moreso go with brands based on their stance on sustainability, data ethics, social issues. Retention's gonna be about what the brand stands for as much as it is for what it sells.

[00:25:20] Robert Zirk: And the third emerging trend Brian sees is the blur between digital and physical worlds in customer experiences.

[00:25:27] Brian Breslin: With the growth we're seeing now with augmented reality and immersive digital experiences, brands are gonna have to rethink their customer experiences in a digital world so that they're maintaining that sort of experience across in-store, website and also virtual environment.

[00:25:43] Robert Zirk: Take Warby Parker, for example. They're an eyewear designer and retailer. You can browse frames on their website, try them on virtually by using AR via their app and visit the store in person for a final fitting.

[00:25:57] That's the level of seamless experience that customers expect across every channel.

[00:26:02] To wrap up, Brian challenges CX leaders to consider these two questions:

[00:26:08] Brian Breslin: Ask yourself: if your biggest competitors offered your customers a 15% or 20% discount, is your customer experience good enough to make your customers stay? Just to top that off, ask yourself: are you just measuring satisfaction or are you measuring loyalty?

[00:26:25] Robert Zirk: Joey's closing advice to CX leaders is to do more things that can't be scaled.

[00:26:31] Joey Coleman: You're not gonna send a six pack of root beer to every one of your customers. I'm not asking you to, you shouldn't. But do send it to the four or five who love root beer. Stop worrying about "How am I gonna take this thing that we've done that is so special and scale it across the enterprise?" Don't do that.

[00:26:47] Instead, just do one-offs. Maybe you have a thing that you try to do special every week or a thing you try to do special every day, or empower your team to do one special thing per month. "Hey, spend a hundred dollars on a customer, just whatever way you want." But then the feedback loop, which I didn't share on that, is at the next monthly meeting, you go around the table and you say, "So Robert, who'd you spend your hundred dollars on and why?"

[00:27:10] "Here's the situation. I spent a hundred dollars to send flowers to this—"

[00:27:13] A hundred dollars worth of flowers is a lot of flowers, right? And now we're having a conversation. "I spent a hundred dollars. I sent a hundred dollars worth of root beer to someone." Oh my gosh, that's gonna get their attention. All of these things just require our willingness to be a little creative and a little thoughtful, and the return on our investment is tremendous.

[00:27:37] Robert Zirk: Thank you so much to Joey Coleman and Brian Breslin for joining me and sharing their insights today. And thank you for listening to Questions for now, a TELUS Digital podcast.

[00:27:49] If this episode challenged how you approach customer retention, share it with someone who needs to hear it — maybe even over their favorite hot or cold beverage.

[00:27:59] For more insights on today's big questions in digital customer experience, follow Questions for now on your podcast player of choice.

[00:28:08] I'm Robert Zirk, and until next time, that's all... for now.

[00:28:14]