There is an idea in business that marketers know well: it is cheaper to keep customers than it is to find new ones. The same goes for employees. It is cheaper to keep employees than to find new ones and train them.
Recently, the church I lead changed banks. The reason was simple: we didn’t get good service at our bank. They made mistakes and things that should’ve been easy were difficult and time consuming.
So we switched.
When we went to close the accounts, the manager came over and said how sorry he was to see us go and if anything changed he’d love to have our business back.
All I could think of was, you had our business. You lost our business.
As soon as he was done saying that and we were closing the account we were told there would be a $10 closing fee.
A fee to close the account.
When we asked the teller if they could waive it, she said no.
We’ll never go back to that bank.
While churches don’t have customers, they have congregants, members or parishioners (insert whatever your tradition calls them). I think churches could benefit from some business thinking on this.
Too many churches think that people will just stay at their church, but that is not reality. For the most part, Americans have a number of options when it comes to religion. Not just other churches, but sleeping in, being outside, kids sports.
I’m not saying a church should create a loyalty program with benefits like Amazon does with Prime, but churches can and should strive for loyalty.
Here are some questions I think churches and leaders should think through:
- What can we do that no one else can do? When churches lose loyalty, it is because they don’t know what they are great at. Companies that have strong loyalty, know what they are good at.
- How can we create ownership and identity in our church? Strong company loyalty also comes with a cult following. Take Apple, a hipster coffee place or Amazon. They have created ownership where their customers will not think about going somewhere else. Your church can and should be the same way.
- How can we focus on the “customer?” I’m blown away by the extent that companies like Google and Amazon go to making the user a priority. Google seems to hate other businesses and is in business solely for the user experience. Churches should have that same focus and passion, in it for the people.
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