Customer Reviews

Customer Winback: How to Recapture Lost Customers--And Keep Them Loyal

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This is one the very few recently published books which focus almost entirely on recapturing lost customers. For more than 20 years while providing consulting services to a wide range of organizations, I have been frequently asked to help to improve business development. These situations have convinced me that, measured in terms of total cost (hours as well as dollars), the greatest ROI in business development is generated from two sources: former customers and current customers. (My own estimate is that the total cost of adding a new customer is 5-8 times greater than the total cost of keeping a current customer.) Almost none of the organizations with which I have been associated already had a comprehensive plan in place to recapture customers. (Does yours?) Obviously, I think this book will be of greatest value in two separate but related areas: keeping the customers you now have, and, recapturing those whom you've lost. "Now is the time to put in place specific strategies and tools for winning back customers, saving customers on the brink of defection, and making your company defective proof."

Their material is organized as follows. Part One (Chapters 1-5) examine why customer win-back is critical to an organization's success, how to manage "The Big Three" (Acquisition, Retention, and Win-Back), specifically, how to win back a lost customer or a customer on the brink of defection, and finally, how to mobilize and manage a "Win-Back Team." Then in Part Two (Chapters 6-10), they shift their attention explain why no customer is ever truly safe from defection and what the implications of that fact are, how to build a Customer Information System which drives loyalty, how to target prospects with strong loyalty potential, how to leverage the power of customer-focused teams, and finally, how to build a fiercely loyal staff. The authors then provide excellent appendices. One is "The Customer Loyalty Compass: A Proven Process for Finding Customer Value. The other is "Estimation of Second Lifetime Value (SLTV) Investment and Profitability." Insofar as the subject of customer recapture is concerned, there seems to be very little that the authors do not cover.

Let's say you have read the book and are ready to proceed. Now what? The authors suggest a series of specific steps which are summarized in Figure 10.1 ( "Getting Started") on page 281 in the hardbound edition which I possess. This section includes five "essential loyalty tools" which will help to make your organization "defection-proof." I hope that this brief commentary has succeeded in indicating what this book offers. Given the fact that your competitors may also read it, I urge you to proceed in a timely manner. Competition for customers (in every industry and market segment) is already ferocious and is certain to become moreso in weeks and months ahead.

Customer Winback, authored by loyalty experts Griffin and Lowenstein, is an important new book in the field of customer loyalty. Published in 2001, Customer Winback is packed with information, examples and practical advice about how to improve sales and profits by re-acquiring lost customers.

Customer re-acquisition is an area that has not been well explored before this book. Most companies don't even track lost customers, much less try to win them back. Yet, as the authors point out, your chances of converting a lost customer are usually much better than your chances of converting a new prospect. This simple fact is a good economic justification for developing a winback program.

How do you win them back? The authors don't offer a magic solution. Instead they provide a business process you can use long term, which is of course much better than a silver bullet. It starts with learning why you lost them in the first place, and then deciding who you want to win back. The authors provide some useful tools for approaching each winback situation. One I like is "Second Lifetime Value" which is sort of a reincarnation of the lifetime value concept.

In the USA, the timing of this book (Spring, 2001) couldn't be better. When the economy is shaky, companies want to do everything they can to keep their customers, or win them back.

Chapters:

1- Why Customer Win-Back is Critical to Your Success

2- Managing the Big Three: Acquisition, Retention and Win-Back

3- Winning back a Lost Customer

4- How to Save a Customer on the Brink of Defection

5- Mobilizing and Managing a Win-Back Team

6- When You Think Your Customer is Safe from Defection

7- Building a Customer Information System that Drives Loyalty

8- Targeting Prospects with Strong Loyalty Potential

9- Leveraging the Power of Customer-Focused Teams

10- How to Build a Fiercely Loyal Staff

Gary Kopacek, CEO, Mill City Marketing

This book deals with the often neglected area of bringing customers back once you have lost them. Griffin and Lowenstein give the reader numerouse specific strategies and tools for winning back lost customers, saving customer before they defect and "making your company defection-proof."

As I have stated in my review for "The Journal of Consumer Marketing",each chapter summarizes the points succinctly in a method that allows the reader to digest the material for long-term memory.

This book is right for people who have,had, or hope to have customers. It is one of the most comprehensive books on getting,keeping and getting back customers that I have encountered. It is for people who teach marketing and for people who do marketing.

Customer Winback has great information and wonderful examples (presented in depth) of what companies can do to address a much-neglected area of customer service--winning back lost customers. It shows how this concept is just as important as emphasizing customer loyalty and customer satisfaction in not only maintaining customers, but keeping them delighted and coming back to buy more.

It is very well organized, well-written and covers a wide range of material. It also gives you many ideas to implement at your own company. Just one chapter provides you with more substance than many entire books. This is an excellent customer service book and a must for customer service managers. I recommend it highly.

Customer Winback has great information and wonderful examples (presented in depth) of what companies can do to address a much-neglected area of customer service--winning back lost customers. It shows how this concept is just as important as emphasizing customer loyalty and customer satisfaction in not only maintaining customers, but keeping them delighted and coming back to buy more.

It is very well organized, well-written and covers a wide range of material. It also gives you many ideas to implement at your own company. Just one chapter provides you with more substance than many entire books. This is an excellent customer service book and a must for customer service managers. I recommend it highly.

A great book.

Conventional thinking promotes four phases of a customer's lifecycle: identify, win, retain and develop relationships. Lowenstein and Griffin add a previously under-explored category, winback, to enable companies to capitalise on the assets they've ignored so far. In a highly accessible style, packed with valuable insights and information, the authors stretch the thinking of the reader, and provide a catalyst for improvement in their own business performance.

I commend the book to all those seriously engaged on the journey towards customer centricity. Buy it, or be left behind.

A complete treatment of the subject. Plenty of examples with something for every business owner's situation. I highly recommend this book for any and all who want to maintain a loyal customer base... and that would be everyone.

We have utilized Customer Winback as a tool in taking our organization to the next level of service recovery. As a healthcare organization renowned for service excellence, we found that this book assisted us in developing new approaches through the case studies and examples offered by the authors. The information provided is clear, straightforward and easy to translate to any industry. It is refreshing to read a book that focuses of the value of keeping existing customers rather than constant recruitment of new customers. I would highly recommend Customer Winback.

Jill Griffin's and Michael Lowenstein's insightful book, Customer WinBack provides a different perspective to Customer Loyalty that many businesses had not considered. That is, some lost customers can be won back! The book provides a practical, research-based guide with several examples and stories on how not only to get customers back, but first determining which customers are worth retaining. The book offers logical and highly readable ways for organizations to structure their Winback programs. The book addresses all aspects of this structure from the team composition and dynamics, to training, and information systems required for successful customer winback and retention. My hats off to these authors for another valuable lesson in customer loyalty and how it impacts profitability.

Carol A. Gonzalez Ph.D. President CG Biomedical Associates

Customer Winback broaches a topic that is applicable to infinitely many businesses. Thoughtful and well-organized, this book teems with appropriate examples for readers on a quest to "winback" customers. The real value in this book is the depth of information Griffin and Lowenstein provide. Rather than simply providing the reader with top-line information, they delve deep into their own knowledge base and extensive research on the topic to present the reader with useful approaches to winning back those much-desired customers!