In this section, I want to talk about why customers leave now before we talked about silent complaints, and so on and so forth. But I wanted to just drill into it and drill into some of the things that drive customers to leave our business or not stop doing business with us. Now, research shows us a whole range of reasons about why customers leave. And that could be anything from people move to be poached to that by the competition to the many people people die, as well. But also the respect that the research also shows that most customers leave because they feel that we're indifferent to them, that we don't care about them, that we don't pay attention to them. And what was interesting about that is because actually, that's completely different to what most businesses think about why customers leave.

They believe that we asked a lot, lots of businesses that many businesses will turn around and say well, that Our customers leave because, you know, for price issues or quality will be pushed by the competition and so on and so forth. But actually, if you ask the customers more often than not, they'll tell you that price isn't an issue. quality isn't issue because they've already picked you. And in actual fact, they've left because of the your quality of your service, I can go back to that idea around. They believe that you're just indifferent to them, that you're not paying attention to them. But also that the other thing we've got to think about is that many firms, many companies, many brands get caught up in the idea that they focus too much on how good they are at their chosen profession.

And they forget a lot of the peripheral things that surround their business, and how much of an impact that has on on what customers think about them. Like for example, I'm going to use another restaurant example because it's just easy to pick right? restaurant examples because we're all familiar with them. I hasten to add, I do like restaurants and I'm not picking on them. But it's, I call it the messy bathroom example. And so imagine this as a story, or situation, you go to you go to a restaurant, and you'd be looking forward to going there for a long time you walk in, that you're greeted by the maitre D, everything smells kind of lovely, the ambience is great, the music and so on and so forth.

And you sit down and you're great table. You know, you order some food and the wine and you having a great time, and the food tastes fabulous. But then in the middle of your meal, you excuse yourself to go to the bathroom. And the bathroom is a mess. I mean, it's a train wreck. It's messy, it's smelly.

It's all of those different sort of things. And then you now have to ask yourself the question, now what do I think about the restaurant? Because most people would respond well, despite that, Over there being a great food, culinary experience, I've now gone to the bathroom and it's a mess. Now I start to question, well, what's the hygiene of the kitchen? Like, if they can't take care of the bathrooms, then what does that say about the cleanliness and hygiene and to the preparation of the food? And then all of a sudden you just get you get all these questions in your mind.

And so the point is, is this is this is that even the smallest things, even the things that sit on the periphery of your business can have a really, really big impact on a customer's perception about how good you are because actually, we have no expertise to judge whether somebody is in good restaurant or or chef or whatever. But we know what it takes to deliver a clean bathroom. We don't understand whether somebody is a good accountant or a good lawyer or a good tax advisor, whatever. But we do understand when somebody is polite on the phone or when they come into their reception area, their office, or how they welcome us, or how often to keep in touch with us. We do understand those things, because those are the things that we do ourselves. So I guess my point is, is that when we think about why customers leave and what affects their perception of us, it's the whole thing.

It's not just about our trade or our profession, or the core part of our brand, it can be anything. It could be our delivery, or logistics or reception, or turnover emails, or how we answer the phone. It could be all of these different sort of things. And therein lies the challenge.