A little-known piece of American research recently prompted the Hewson Group to write a thoughtful piece about the way organisations handle the early days of a commercial relationship. Ironic really, given current events, but this is all based on analysing the pattern of customer acquisition and loss by American Banks! It emerges that they lose 30% of new customers for checking accounts within the first twelve months; the mobile phone industry can tell a similar tale.

Pity the salesman or saleswoman! All their efforts to sign up new customers squandered as forces beyond their control – or certainly after their event – intervene. The upside is that this is simultaneously the best time in the customer life-cycle for cross-selling other products and services. Whichever way you look at it, this initial period seems critical, and the evidence is that quite a lot of organisations are pretty poor at managing it.