Inactive Customers.

[ACE]

I am working on cleaning up the customer list and trying fill out all the information (contact, email, and phone). I realized I am losing allot of money by not keeping good records and staying on contact. I just called a $300.00 commercial job and my contact no longer works there so they called another company because they didn’t know who cleans their carpet. At some point I will need to invest in customer management software, but I could do allot with QuickBooks just by keeping better records.

Anyways…… My question is when do you write a customer off as being inactive? I would guess after 3 years the chances of them calling are slim and I should stop marketing to them.

 

[Jim Nelson]

I have two customers on a 8 year cycle .

 

[ACE]

Assuming I start making a diligent effort to stay in contact, A better way to handle it might be to call them up after 2-3 years and flat out ask them if they would like to stay on our customer list and receive special offers.

 

[Desk Jockey]

Depends on how much work they bring. A few hundred, 3-years maybe. ??? Much more than that I'd be willing to spend a little more time trying to get them to call.

Yep I think if you call them you will see MUCH better results.

 

[Ken Snow]

Like Richard said, you may also tier your contacts based on frequency. Something we started a few years ago is trying to get permission to remind each customer forbtheir next cleaning. They choose the timeframe and then we call to schedule them based on that.

 

[ACE]

Like Richard said, you may also tier your contacts based on frequency. Something we started a few years ago is trying to get permission to remind each customer forbtheir next cleaning. They choose the timeframe and then we call to schedule them based on that.

What kind of Customer Management Software do you use?

 

[Ken Snow]

We built our order entry processes into a mid size accounting platform called Navision Financials and do mailing through it but the permission based contact is done on excel spreadsheet.

 

[ACE]

so, the chimp checks a box or two on the work order, it gets entered into excel. Excel is sorted by next service date. I have been thiniking about excel to keep track of the commercail work. It seems like alot of work to keep the file current and would be duplicating data entry. I’m surprised you don’t have something more streamlined.

 

[Ken Snow]

They are entered off the questionnaires that are returned. We need to get beeter at it and get it from our Customer Care Coordinators on the front end vs the back end which is only about 10% of the customers. Still a work in progress.