A Master Class in the Hardest Stop in the Customer Journey: The End

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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…