Running a business is stressful, it is a continuous hustle to meet the expectations of customers while constantly working towards developing strategies to beat the competition. It’s like running through an endless maze in a fantasy movie to save yourselves from monsters like the deadline, operational glitch, and target. It is tough to keep it together and so often, an individual running a business is troubled with one thought that is customers ghosting them.
Ghosting is an urban term that is linked with the behaviour of suddenly discontinuing communication with an individual, who most probably likes you. However, in the business world, it refers to the behaviour displayed by customers who were willing to make a deal but suddenly change their minds. Whether you are running a call centre outsourcing business or are operating in any other domain, you will be familiar with this behaviour and will understand why mitigating it matters so much.
Imagine, you generated a lead and are anticipating it to convert it into a sale and then suddenly the customer refuses to respond to your calls, messages, and Emails. It’s kind of demotivating because we know how challenging it is to generate a lead and it slipping off your hands without any sound reason is unfortunate. However, a customer won’t ghost you without any reason and it is crucial to know the reason behind this occurrence.
Why do customers ghost you?
In a typical call centre outsourcing business, the possibility of customers ghosting is less because they have customer service experts constantly following up and assisting to push the leads into the sales pipeline. However, businesses in other operational realms are susceptible to suffer from this customer behaviour pattern; let’s take a look at a few of the reasons behind it.
Meeting the needs
A lot of times businesses fail to identify the target audience, which is why they end up contacting customers they can’t potentially serve. To ensure that customers don’t ghost you, it is vital to contact the ones who will find your offerings relevant to their needs. The potential of your marketing campaigns and lead generation process can increase rapidly when you are hitting the right target audience. What you are offering should fit the needs of potential customers because they might not turn down the offer right away but will most probably ghost you.
Timing is everything
Your customers are busy and when you call them in the middle of the day when they just got out of a stressful meeting or while they are busy dealing with targets and deadlines, prepare to be ghosted sooner or later. A polite way to ensure that your customers pay heed to whatever you are saying is asking whether it is an appropriate time to contact or not. Even the timing you send Emails and messages is important, opt for sending them at the end of the day because most people are likely to check their inboxes at this time.
Did you listen?
A lot of times, we don’t realize that in our B2C interactions we tend to make a mistake and this has a really bad impact on the perception of the customers. Listening to your customers is as important as them hearing you. By listening attentively you can mould the communication to make it more agreeable for your customers. So, to ensure that a communication is lucrative, listen first and speak afterward. There is no point of smothering customers with information that they most likely aren’t even interested in.
Are they with your competitor?
Competition is what drives your business to perform better but it is also behind your downfall if you fail to counter it. In the business world, fighting competition is like fighting a dragon with a bucket of water but if you are determined enough, you will never give up. When you contact a new customer or an old one who suddenly got off-board, you can expect that he/she is trusting a competitor because of various factors. This is one of the most common reasons why your customers ghost you; to counter it, the best way is to know what is unique about your competitor that entices customers. This will help you in developing the required strategies to not just meet but exceed the expectations of your customers.
There are many other factors behind customers ghosting businesses but when you invest your time and money smartly, you can alleviate such obstacles like a pro. However, the first step is understanding the occurrences that lead to your customers ghosting you. To treat a disease or bodily malfunction, doctors need to test and diagnose what exactly you are suffering from. Same it is with your customers turning their backs on you. There is always a reason why they do so, you need to get to the root of such problems to remedy them.