- Data journalist Mona Chalabi asked herself: what makes friendships last?
- The average person loses half of their friendships every seven years.
- Looking at her talk from a marketing perspective, it’s important to consider the relationship equilibrium, really knowing our customers, parting on good terms, and more.
In her 2021 TED Talk, data journalist Mona Chalabi ponders a simple yet thought-provoking question:
What makes friendships last?
Chalabi then uses her own research (and her mother’s words of wisdom) to provide some background and an answer to her question.
In listening to Chalabi’s talk from a marketer’s perspective, we find several parallels between interpersonal friendships and customer relationships.
Here’s what we’ve discovered.
The Relationship Equilibrium
Chalabi’s Talk starts with her explaining that the average person loses half of their friendships every seven years.
Though we typically maintain about the same number and quality of friends as the years go by. So, as Chalabi explains, if you have ten close friends now, you’ll probably still have ten close friends in seven years — even if four or five of them are completely different people.
For marketers, there are a couple lessons to take from this.
First, the simple fact is that even your best customers will churn at some point. At the very least, then, you need to be able to predict customer churn from multiple angles — and systematically work to reduce it as best you can.
You’ll need to replace the customers you lose over time . As you do, it’s crucial to target audiences and individuals that are similar to your VIP customers in both character and behavior. That way, you can fast-track their growth using an approach similar to what worked for your current top-value customers.
On the note of quantity, you want your audience to be expanding almost continuously — at least to a point. As with personal friendships, bringing on too many customers too quickly can make it difficult to manage each individual relationship. To this end, you need to know your team has the capacity to expand to new audiences in order to do so successfully.
The Value of Knowing Your Customers
To illustrate the importance of knowing your friends, Chalabi turns to a metaphor her mother always uses:
“How does friendship start? The first thing is to know that person. If you don’t want to know these people, if you don’t open a window of communication, you will never become friends.”
The same goes for our relationships with our customers: If we don’t actively work to know them and listen to them, there’s just no way the relationship will thrive.
Note that Chalabi (and her mother) put the onus on us to “open the window.”.
She puts it even more plainly a moment later, stating “You have to start”.
As providers, it’s up to us to:
- Give our customers the opportunity to have their voices heard
- Actively engage with them — and learn from these engagements
- Work to learn about our customers even when not engaging directly with them
This means:
- Diving deep into your existing customer data — and unearthing it as it becomes available
- Surveying them at critical moments in their journey with your brand
- Maintaining comprehensive records of all customer engagements that occur over time
Relationships Take Time and Effort to Flourish
Solid relationships aren’t forged overnight.
But we’ve probably never quantified the amount of time and effort it takes to form such strong bonds. As Chalabi points out, the strongest of friendships can take upwards of 200 hours of quality time to form.
Note the key term “quality time.” Time and effort are both essential to the creation of solid friendships and interpersonal relationships.
As Chalabi explains, superficial interactions — like at the grocery store — don’t lead to strong bonds, no matter how often they occur.
We can apply this to our customer relationships in a few different ways.
For one, it’s important to understand the value of your current customers in terms of what it will take to replace them. While you’ve ideally kept your time-to-value to a minimum, you also want to have realistic expectations when bringing new customers onboard.
It’s also important to not take your customer relationships for granted — ever. Instead, you should always be looking for ways to keep your brand top-of-mind, and to keep your customers coming back for more.
That said, you need to continually add value to your customer’s brand experience in order to keep your relationships thriving. In merely maintaining the status quo, the law of diminishing returns will eventually cause your customers’ satisfaction levels to drop. This, in turn, will lead them to look to your competitors, who may be better able to cater to their evolving needs.
In delivering increasing value to your returning customers, you’ll get much more from them in return, such as:
- Increased average order values and purchase frequencies
- Additional feedback and insight into their needs and expectations
- Word-of-mouth referrals, targeted to specific individuals in their networks
Parting on Good Terms (and Leaving the Window Open)
Chalabi and her mother lament that time, distance, and numerous other circumstances do inevitably come between most friendships and interpersonal relationships.
Unfortunately, all friendships fade without regular interaction. Even with solid effort from both sides to keep the flame lit, some relationships just aren’t able to continue as they once had.
And so it is with your customers.
While minimizing churn should again be a top priority, you also need to know when to accept that a customer is leaving — and know how to make the most out of a less-than-ideal situation.
For one, you want to keep the window open for potential future engagements. Just as a random phone call can rekindle an old friendship, you want your customers to know that they can always reach back out to you should the need arise.
When a customer actively requests to leave your brand behind, you should at least attempt to collect feedback from them before they do. A comprehensive exit survey — along with a potential discussion afterwards — can provide insight into why they’re leaving, and what you could do to keep others like them onboard moving forward.