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A Master Class in the Hardest Stop in the Customer Journey: The End
This article is about the part of the customer journey marketers often screw up: the ending.
I know, it’s not our fault. We spend countless hours trying to minimize churn and attrition and optimize client retention. We craft helpful reminder messages — “Did you forget this?” “Time to order more,” “Take 10% off!” and those kinds of things.
We mean well, but the critical point that we often miss is that the reason for churn and attrition may have nothing to do with what the company or marketer did.
We forget that a lot of the time, it’s not business — it’s personal.
So, now I’m going to tell you a story that a friend and colleague shared with me about how an empathetic pet goods company handled potentially losing her as a customer. Rather than hound her, they let empathy lead, and in the process, showed why they’re a top dog in the industry.
Making Sure Every Dog Has Its Day
My friend’s 14-year-old dog — her constant companion and the puppy she raised alongside her children, now both in college — recently got a devastating (but common) diagnosis: bladder cancer.
Within a few weeks, it became clear the dog was suffering, so she and her family made the heartbreaking decision it was time to help their fur baby drop her body. (My friend’s words, not mine, although I appreciate the rebranding of the horrific expression “put the dog down.”)
Having lived through this heart-wrenching experience myself, I know how traumatic this can be. We don’t need statistics like the fact that pet industry expenditures are forecasted to hit $110 billion by the end of the year. Or that more than 50% of pet owners give their dog or cat a gift or treat for holidays. And even that the global pet clothing market topped $5 billion in 2020.
Pets are family, period.
My friend decided it was too painful to look at her dog’s belongings the day after, so she spent some time putting things away. It was then that she remembered she…
