You read the title correctly: the little details of our customer interactions don’t mean a lot. Nor are they essential to the success of your business. Stop doing them and you can spend more of your time concentrating on turning prospects into new customers. In fact, a recent study validates this viewpoint as it found that companies lose 50 percent of customers every five years, which is enough reason in itself to avoid going above and beyond the baseline of expectations for your customers. Some might even argue that it’s a waste of your time to pay attention to details because of this enormous amount of churn. Besides, just as some of your customers will leave you and go to your competitors, similarly your competitors will have that same loss of their customers who may decide to come to you. So you see, it all balances out.

It's OK to Be Like Everyone Else

There aren’t many reasons to change the way that you are handling your business today. After all, if you’re in business one could assume that you have customers. So you must be doing something right. Right? In fact, there really are only two primary reasons for you to strive for improvement of any kind. The first? Your customer. You know the one with the roving eye who wants to make sure his or her buying decision is the right one. The second reason? Your competition. That’s right, your competition with their apathetic attitude about winning over your customers. That’s basically the same attitude that you have about your competitors’ customers, as well. Isn’t it? It all evens out really, and reinforces my hypothesis that little things don’t mean a lot to your customers.

Consider Reconsidering

The sad fact of today’s seemingly “connected” world is that relationships in many ways have become commodities. Not so long ago, each and every customer was viewed as valuable, but in today’s market, customers are often viewed as disposable. The study I mentioned also found that reducing customer loss by as little as five percent delivers an extra 30 percent to your business’s bottom line. Therein lies your opportunity to reduce customer turnover, while accumulating the customers your competition loses by failing to offer that additional attention to detail. How? Realize that the title of my post, intended to elicit a bit of shock, is wrong. Instead, recognize that to earn and keep customers, you must not ignore the little details. After all, the little things don’t mean a lot; they mean everything!