A customer will break up with your business if you ignore him or her. That’s a fact. According to a study mentioned in this article, you have the potential to lose 20 percent of your customers if you fail to nurture the relationship.  One way to nurture customers is to make sure you answer their questions in a timely matter, whether those questions come via Twitter, Facebook, email, in person or by the phone. If you don’t do it in a timely fashion, you’ll lose them. Your chances of winning that customer back, according to the same study, are 20 to 40 percent.  Better to have not lost them in the first place.

So, do you ensure you don’t lose customers due to neglect? Hire the right people, be responsive and act like a human, offer ways to stay in touch, show empathy for a customer’s feelings, save your excuses and try to learn from these bad experiences.

Also, you might hire a mystery shopping firm such as Customer Perspectives to make sure your employees are following through.