The word is “churn”, and it’s very important one in the telecom world. It’s the key metric that measures how many customers leave a company over a year. For example, in 2013 Rogers revealed that it had a 1.4% churn rate for its customers (which, not surprisingly, is the worst out of the big three).
The problem is, using the word “churn” has a negative connotation. It’s about customers leaving due to dissatisfaction, or for not providing the service or product as promised, or just not being as good as the “other guy.”
We’re not negative around here so that’s why we don’t use it, or at least we try not to, (but being telecom people, it does slip out new and again). Instead we use “Retention Rate”, meaning year-over-year how many customers do we keep instead of lose.
In NEWT’s case that number is…. well I can’t tell you because it’s an industry secret for reasons beyond comprehension. We should be shouting it from the mountain tops if I had my way, but that’s neither here nor there.
But I can tell you it’s not quite 100%, (but it’s so very, very close!).
Even though that is remarkably high number, we’re not very happy about it. When we lose a customer we go all CSI over ourselves trying to determine precisely what we did that wasn’t making that particular client happy. Did they get a better deal? How is that even possible? Was it something with our technology? Does another vendor have a feature we don’t?
As painful as it is, losing a customer is always a teachable moment. We learn from the rare event when we lose a customer in order to become a better company, a better provider and a better business partner.
Bottom line: We’re always shooting for 100% (although being within a hairs breathe ain’t nothing).
For information on NEWT, and how we manage to keep our customers with us, drop by the NEWT Website or give us a call at 1 (888) 996-6398.
