With the explosion of the Internet, many marketers feel that reaching out to the customer is far easier than before and therefore spending dollars in trying to retain current customers is futile. However, data suggests that a customer who is unhappy is likely to talk about it to 8 to 16 people.

More than 90 percent of the people who are unhappy never go back and purchase anything from the company or brand they are unhappy with. The cost of attracting a new customer is 5 times more than that of retaining a current one. With the popularity of social networks, it is far easier to spread the word around about one mistake that a company does or one bad experience that a customer had. The network of an average customer is estimated to be about 250 people. While it is important that you do the math for your own company, a 5% increase in retention rates could up the profit by 25% to 100%.

When you lose a customer you:
- Lose an opportunity of genuine recommendation
- Attract negative word of mouth
- Increase your marketing costs
- Lose the lifetime revenue that you could have gained from this lost client and his referrals