An Intro to Customer Switching

Well for better or worse I’m back and thanks for the emails asking where I’ve been!  It’s nice to know the work I put into our blog is appreciated.

Did you know that in any given year about 1/3 of your customer base is vulnerable?  That sounds like the sort of conventional wisdom thrown about at a marketing conference.  Well we at BioInformatics, LLC have actually proved that it’s true in the life science market.  Recently we asked more than 2,000 scientists a series of questions about their switching behavior and the results will be eye-opening to those that assume that their customers are locked-in because of the use of required protocols and mandated reproducibility.  In fact, roughly 1 in 2 scientists who consider switching brands actually do so.  We also learned that scientists will typically tolerate product-related problems happening no more than twice in a 6-month period before switching.  What happens if they’re not reporting those problems to you (and they’re probably not)?  They’ll defect to a competitor, they’ll complain about you to their colleagues, and you won’t know why.

I’m really proud of this latest report — Understanding Switching Dynamics: Maximizing Customer Retention in the Life Sciences — it represents some of our best work to date.  We used a series of straightforward survey questions to build complex statistical models that profile the customers of 30 different suppliers.  The complexity of the analysis is made understandable by the use of an easy-to-read “dashboard” that allows you to scan your customers’ numerous indicators including personal experience with your brand, the degree to which they’re locked in to using your products and how they feel about their relationship with your company.

We’ll delve more deeply into the issue of switching next post.