Typically in retail today, they say that about 20% of your customers today will never buy from you again. If it costs you $50 to $100 to acquire a new customer then for every 1,000 customers a year replacing those 200 lost customers is costing a retailer between $10,000 to $20,000 a year. This figure is almost certainly based on large retailers, not SMB but it does show the extent of the problem.
It is called the *churn*.
The problem is that there is no simple solution and in fact, there is *NO* total solution. In Australia, for example, almost half the Australian population moves house during the past five years, it is about 16% a year.
I know I moved recently as such I have changed my newsagent, my supermarket, my pharmacist, my dentist, many but not all of my restaurants, etc. I certainly was not dissatisfied with any of these businesses, far from it, it is just that now I am too far away.
So if you have a customer who comes regularly for ages and now for some reason you never see them, this is a common problem in business but here is a way of detecting who they are.
In your point of sale software, go to the main menu and click on "Customer Reports" as shown by the green arrow.
Now go to "Customer accounts" and then go "Non-Active Accounts" as shown with the blue arrow.
Now just go into the basic section in criteria and this will pop up.
Put in some appropriate dates
Now off will pop out a list of all those customers who no longer trade with you for you to investigate. As a punt, I would say about a quarter you can do something about.
This will not help you of course with those that do not have an account.
