Why Customers Stay or Leave a Supplier

For any business, the question of customer retention is fundamental. Why do some customers stay loyal for years, while others leave after a single transaction? The answer directly impacts profitability and long-term growth.

Customer loyalty is never a given. In both B2B and B2C, it must be continuously earned. While many organizations focus on acquiring new customers, the real foundation for growth is a loyal customer base. Retaining an existing customer is far more cost-effective than acquiring a new one. Loyal customers buy more, refer others, and become brand advocates. Conversely, a single negative experience can result in a customer leaving, and once they're gone, it's difficult to win them back.

This blog explores the reasons customers stay and leave, highlighting the strategies that can help you reduce customer churn and build a resilient business.

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Why Customers Stay

The decision to stay is a mix of rational and emotional factors. When customers feel valued, they're less likely to look elsewhere.

Trust and Reliability

At the heart of every strong supplier relationship is trust. Customers need to know you'll deliver on your promises. In a B2B setting, a missed delivery can halt production, costing thousands. In B2C, a late or faulty product damages confidence and discourages repeat purchases. Businesses that build a reputation for reliability gain loyalty because customers know they can depend on them.

Service and Product Quality

Service quality is often the deciding factor. Customers want accessible support, fast response times, and proactive problem-solving. A supplier who takes ownership of mistakes and resolves them quickly demonstrates a commitment to customer satisfaction. Similarly, product quality is non-negotiable. When quality slips, customers start looking for alternatives. Beyond quality, innovation plays a crucial role and suppliers who regularly improve their offering signal that they are forward-thinking and committed to long-term value.

Strong Supplier Relationship

A strong supplier relationship is more than just a series of transactions. It's built on transparent communication, shared goals, and aligned values. Personalised engagement, regular check-ins, and collaborative problem-solving strengthen the partnership and make it harder for competitors to disrupt.

Perceived Value and Convenience

Price matters, but it's rarely the only factor. Customers stay when they perceive that they are receiving greater overall value, which includes quality, service, and reliability. Additionally, high switching costs, whether financial or just the effort involved in changing, can keep customers with existing suppliers. For B2C customers, convenience and habit play a similar role.

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Why Customers Leave

Just as loyalty is earned, so is disloyalty. Customers leave when they feel undervalued, disappointed, or neglected.

Missed Promises and Inconsistency

Nothing erodes trust faster than a broken promise. Delays, frequent errors, or inconsistent service drive customers away. When businesses repeatedly fail to deliver, customers begin to doubt every commitment.

Poor Quality and Competitor Advantage

When product or service quality declines, customers notice. They may tolerate minor issues initially, but repeated failures will push them toward competitors who offer better solutions. In a competitive market, if a rival offers more innovative or cost-effective solutions, customers may switch.

Lack of Communication

Customers want to feel valued. A lack of communication, whether ignoring feedback, failing to provide updates, or not checking in, makes customers feel invisible. If you don't engage with your customers, your relationships will weaken over time.

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Why New Customers Don't Return

Securing a new customer is only half the battle; retaining them after their first transaction is the real test. First impressions matter. A confusing onboarding process or unmet expectations will lead to quick churn. If the experience doesn't match the marketing, a new customer feels misled and has no reason to return. Transactions alone rarely build customer loyalty.

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Strategies to Improve Customer Retention

Businesses can actively shape retention outcomes by prioritising strategies that strengthen relationships.

• Continuous Customer Feedback: Gathering and acting on feedback builds trust and reveals problems before they lead to churn. Customers who feel heard are more loyal.

• Proactive Problem-Solving: Mistakes happen, but a proactive recovery can turn dissatisfaction into loyalty. Taking ownership and resolving issues quickly demonstrates your commitment to customer satisfaction.

• Build a Retention-Focused Business Strategy: Retention should be central to your business strategy, not an afterthought. Set KPIs for churn, embed customer-focused processes, and train your staff in relationship management.

• Invest in Service and Supply Chain Management: A reliable supply chain is essential. Investing in logistics, technology, and staff training improves consistency and reduces errors, which directly impacts customer loyalty.

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Final Thoughts

Customers rarely leave for no reason. They leave because expectations were not met, promises were broken, or competitors offered more. They stay when they feel valued, supported, and confident in your ability to deliver.

At Josty, we believe every organization should invest as much energy in retention as in acquisition. Customers who stay provide stability, advocacy, and long-term profitability. Understanding why customers stay and why they leave is the first step toward building strategies that Empower Growth and Secure Success.

Post written by Jason Jost

Is Good Customer Service Slowly Dying?

These days, it feels like the simple act of receiving good customer service is becoming rarer and rarer. For every positive experience that leaves us impressed, there are multiple poor experiences that frustrate us, waste our time, and erode our trust.

What concerns me isn’t that businesses sometimes get things wrong as mistakes are inevitable. It’s how they handle those mistakes that seems to be slipping. Instead of receiving genuine apologies or meaningful solutions, we are often met with defensiveness, excuses, or, worse still, complete indifference. Even when a response does come, it’s frequently scripted, insincere, and designed to close the complaint quickly rather than resolve the underlying issue.

This shift raises an uncomfortable question: is good customer service slowly dying?

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The Hard Truth About Bad Service

Here’s the reality: bad customer experience equals lost customers.

Yet, too many businesses act as if customer loyalty is unconditional, as though we’ll tolerate delays, poor communication, and empty apologies because it’s too hard to switch. That might be true for a little while, but customers today have more choices than ever. Competitors are only a click away. And with online reviews and social media amplifying every experience, the cost of poor service is far greater than just losing one customer. It can create a ripple effect that damages a brand’s reputation for years.

Businesses that fail to acknowledge this are playing a dangerous game. Customer service is no longer a nice-to-have. In many industries, it is the only sustainable differentiator. Products can be copied. Pricing strategies can be matched. Technology can be replicated. But the experience customers have with your people that’s much harder to duplicate.

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Where Leadership and Culture Fit In

When I think about why customer service is deteriorating, the finger often points at leadership and culture. If leaders don’t genuinely believe that customers matter, the message quickly trickles down. When leadership is focused only on short-term cost cutting, service becomes the first corner to cut.

Culture plays an equally powerful role. If staff feel unsupported, undervalued, or constantly pressured to move on to the next task, it’s unrealistic to expect them to deliver warm, attentive service. On the other hand, when culture is built on ownership, pride, and a genuine desire to help, employees are empowered to go beyond the script and truly serve the customer.

The organisations that stand out are those where leaders don’t just say customers come first, they live it. They set the tone by listening to complaints instead of brushing them aside. They reward behaviours that build trust, not just those that hit targets. And they treat service as part of the brand promise, not just the cost of doing business.

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The Illusion of Efficiency

Another factor is the rise of automation and outsourcing. While technology has the potential to make service more seamless, it too often strips away the human element. Chatbots that can’t resolve an issue, endless phone menus, or offshore call centres with no authority to make decisions are examples of efficiency on paper that result in frustration in reality.

The drive to save costs in the short term has blinded many organisations to the long-term damage these models cause. Efficiency should never come at the expense of effectiveness. Customers don’t remember how quickly you answered the call if you didn’t actually solve their problem. They remember whether you cared enough to fix it.

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The Questions Leaders Must Ask

If customer service really is dying, then leaders need to look in the mirror and ask some uncomfortable questions:

• Are we setting the right tone in our organisations for how customers should be treated?

• Do we see complaints as an inconvenience, or as an opportunity to earn back trust?

• Are we listening to the experiences of our frontline teams, who often know the customer’s pain points better than anyone else?

• And most importantly, do we understand that every single negative interaction carries consequences far beyond that one transaction?

Because here’s the truth: you can spend millions on marketing, branding, and advertising. But one bad service experience can undo it all.

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Why Businesses Can’t Afford to Ignore This

Customer service isn’t just about solving problems; it’s about creating trust. Every time a business dismisses a complaint, makes excuses, or offers a hollow apology, it erodes that trust. And once trust is gone, loyalty follows.

The companies that will thrive in the future are not necessarily those with the best products or the cheapest prices but those who treat customers with respect, empathy, and consistency. They will be the ones who see complaints not as a cost but as an opportunity to learn and improve. They will be the ones who invest in their people, because empowered and valued employees create empowered and valued customers.

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Final Thought

Good customer service may be dying, but it doesn’t have to. It is within every leader’s power to breathe life back into it. That starts with culture, accountability, and the courage to treat customers not as transactions but as people.

But if businesses continue to ignore the warning signs, if they continue to believe that customers will tolerate poor experiences without consequence, then customer service won’t just die quietly. It will take those businesses down with it.

Good customer service isn't a luxury it's your most powerful competitive advantage.

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If your business is ready to transform its customer experience and build a culture of trust and excellence, Josty can help.

We work with leaders to design and implement strategies that turn your customer service from a cost center into a growth engine.

Find out how Josty can help you earn lasting customer loyalty at josty.nz.

The Crushing Weight of Deception: How the Ministry of Health's "Customer Service" is Failing Patients and Frontline Staff

 

The term "customer service" often evokes images of polite interactions, efficient problem-solving, and a genuine desire to assist. However, my recent experience with the health system in Auckland, New Zealand, has exposed a far more insidious reality: a systemic failure of empathy, a blatant disregard for patient well-being, and a deeply concerning practice of institutionalized dishonesty that leaves both patients and frontline staff in an untenable position.

My ordeal began with a glimmer of hope, a letter received 17 weeks ago informing me that my first consultation with a consulting surgeon, ahead of a much-needed operation, would occur within eight weeks. For someone living with daily pain, this news was a beacon, a promise of relief on the horizon. It allowed me to mentally prepare, to adjust my expectations, and to believe that progress was being made towards addressing my health needs. This hope, however, was built on a foundation of deceit.

The shattering truth arrived during a recent phone call, a follow-up prompted by the now long-passed "eight-week" deadline. The stark confirmation was that the actual wait time would be a year at best, a devastating blow that sent waves of frustration and despair crashing over me. The additional months of enduring pain, of putting my life on hold, felt like an unbearable burden, amplified by the initial, false promise.

But the true depth of this institutional failing became chillingly clear during my conversation with the individual on the other end of the line. A seemingly routine inquiry about the discrepancy in timelines unearthed a disturbing practice. With a palpable weariness in her voice, the staff member at the District Health Board (DHB) confessed that the Ministry of Health has been deliberately instructing them to mislead patients in their correspondence since the COVID lockdowns. They are compelled to disseminate letters containing inaccurate timelines, essentially perpetuating a lie that offers fleeting hope before ultimately delivering a crushing disappointment.

The implications of this policy are far-reaching and deeply damaging. For patients like myself, already navigating the anxiety and uncertainty of health issues, this calculated dishonesty erodes trust in the very institutions meant to care for us. The initial hope ignited by the misleading letter is not just extinguished; it is replaced by a profound sense of betrayal and anger. Living with chronic pain is a constant battle, and the anticipation of treatment becomes a vital psychological anchor. To have that anchor yanked away by a deliberate falsehood is not merely inconvenient; it actively harms our mental and emotional well-being. It forces us to readjust our lives based on a false premise, delaying crucial personal and professional decisions, and prolonging the physical and emotional suffering.

Beyond the direct impact on patients, this culture of dishonesty casts a dark shadow over the dedicated frontline staff within the DHBs. These are the individuals who bear the brunt of the Ministry's deceptive practices. They are the ones who have to answer the phone calls from anguished, frustrated, and often angry patients who have been led to believe that help was imminent. They are forced to deliver the bad news, to explain the inexplicable delays, and to witness firsthand the emotional fallout of a system that prioritizes a misleading facade over honest communication.

The ethical burden placed upon these frontline workers is immense. They are compelled to participate in a system that actively deceives the very people they are meant to serve. This dissonance between their professional obligation to care and the institutional mandate to mislead must take a significant toll on their morale and job satisfaction. It breeds cynicism, erodes trust in their leadership, and ultimately puts them in a position where they are seen as the bearers of bad news, even though they are merely cogs in a dysfunctional machine.

The Ministry of Health's rationale for this policy, shrouded in the aftermath of the COVID lockdowns, remains opaque and unconvincing. While the pandemic undoubtedly placed immense strain on the healthcare system, resorting to systematic deception is not a sustainable or ethical solution. Transparency, even when delivering difficult news, fosters understanding and allows patients to make informed decisions about their care. Lies, on the other hand, breed resentment, distrust, and ultimately exacerbate the anxiety and frustration of those already in vulnerable circumstances.

The flow-on effects of this dishonesty are significant. Beyond the individual suffering, it damages the overall reputation of the healthcare system and erodes public confidence. When patients feel they cannot trust the information they receive from health authorities, it can lead to a breakdown in communication and a reluctance to engage with the system. This ultimately undermines the very purpose of a public health service, which is to provide reliable and trustworthy care to the population.

It is time for accountability. The Ministry of Health must acknowledge the detrimental impact of this policy of misleading patients. They owe it to the patients who have been given false hope and to the frontline staff who have been placed in an impossible position. A fundamental shift towards transparency and honest communication is urgently needed. While addressing the systemic issues within the healthcare system that lead to these long waiting times is crucial, it must be coupled with a commitment to treating patients with the respect and honesty they deserve.

As someone directly impacted by this egregious failure of "customer service," I implore those in positions of power, including Simeon Brown, to take note of this unacceptable situation. I am willing to discuss this further, to share my experience in the hope that it can contribute to meaningful change. However, words are no longer enough. The Ministry of Health must move beyond platitudes and demonstrate a genuine commitment to honesty, transparency, and the well-being of both patients and the dedicated frontline staff who are struggling under the weight of institutional deception. The people of Auckland, and the wider New Zealand community deserve better.

Who’s the Face of Your Company? (Hint: It’s Not Who You Think)

 

When I ask business owners, “Who’s the face of your company?”, the answers are almost always the same
“Our sales team.”
“Our receptionists.”
“Our customer service reps.”

And yes, these people are obviously the first point of contact in many cases. They’re trained, polished, and ready to represent the brand. But here’s the thing: they are not the only face of your company.

If you think the only people representing your business are the ones sitting at the front desk or on the phones, you’re missing something huge.

The Overlooked Brand Ambassadors

Businesses often invest heavily in customer service training for people in roles such as:

• Sales teams

• Receptionists

• Customer Service Representatives

• Call Centre Agents

• Help Desk Technicians

• Client Services Managers

• Customer Success Managers

• Contact Centre Supervisors

… and that’s great. These people need the skills.

But here’s the blind spot: what about your technicians, tradespeople, delivery drivers, installers, and on-site service teams?

These are the people who show up in front of your customers more than anyone else in your organisation. They’re in the customer’s space, they’re talking directly to them, and they’re building (or breaking) trust in real time.

Why It Matters

It doesn’t matter how slick your branding is or how many five-star Google reviews you’ve got if a customer’s experience with your technician is poor, that’s the story they’ll tell others.

Your tech might be brilliant at their craft of fixing machinery, installing systems, or delivering products but if they’re dismissive, abrupt, or just seem uninterested, it reflects directly on your business.

I’ve seen companies with amazing marketing lose clients simply because the person doing the actual work didn’t have the same customer service skills as the office staff.

Customer Service Is a Company-Wide Skill

Customer service isn’t a department. It’s a mindset.

Every person in your business who interacts with a customer whether it’s face-to-face, over the phone, or via email is part of the customer experience.

And the reality is, your customers don’t make a mental distinction between “the office team” and “the trades team.”
They just see your company.

If one person drops the ball, the whole business looks bad.

Practical Tips for Getting This Right

1. Train everyone, not just the front line.
   Invest in customer service training for technicians, tradespeople, and delivery teams anyone who meets your customers.

2. Teach soft skills alongside technical skills.
   Things like tone of voice, active listening, empathy, and problem-solving go a long way in building trust.

3. Make it part of onboarding.
   Don’t just run one-off workshops, build customer service training into your culture from day one.

4. Model the behaviour at leadership level.
   If you want a customer-first culture, your management team needs to live it too.

The Real “Face” of Your Company

Your brand isn’t just your logo, your website, or your social media feed.
It’s every single interaction a customer has with your business.

That means your field teams, installers, and technicians are just as much the face of your company as your top salesperson or your friendly receptionist.

If they’re professional, helpful, and easy to deal with, customers will remember the experience for all the right reasons. If not… well, they’ll remember that too.

The Bottom Line

Customer service training is not an optional extra for “non-customer-facing” staff it’s essential for everyone.

Your customers are forming an opinion of your business every single time they meet someone from your team. Let’s make sure that impression is consistently great, no matter who they’re dealing with.

Empowering Growth, Securing Success - that’s what we do.

If you want to build a business where everyone represents your brand at the highest level, visit our website via the link in our bio.