Brand equity ends like this.

Brands lose lots when a customer leaves. Not just the revenue of a loyal customer, but, arguably more important, the brand equity. Gargantuan effort, resources, and money at the beginning is lost at the end.

Ask any consumer, who found it a difficult to leave, what they think of that brand after departure and you will always hear their promise of ‘never again’.

At least once a week on Twitter someone call my attention to a nightmare experience they have had leaving a brand. Maybe a subscription service, or some gym, or occasionally a digital service.

Let’s consider brand equity over the consumer lifecycle.

For any business that is doing a decent job on their marketing, they have attracted a target user, and converted them to a customer.

Then, hopefully that business has built a good product and the customer is happy with their commitment. Continued satisfying experience could potentially end up with that peak of brand ambition loyalty. But eventually, this will end. And the consumer is going to transition through the companies off-boarding experience.

The end

Many businesses fall somewhere between ignorance of their customers experience at the end or are so scared of people leaving have put enormous barriers in the way. Neither are good. Both result in a loss of brand equity.

If for example a customer has signed up for a service and the website makes it super hard to leave. Making the consumer feel misdirected and trapped. A normal human reaction might be anger. Resulting in a severe drop in brand equity. Which might take a long time to forgive. Zendesk believe a bad consumer experience can result in brand avoidance of up to two years by the customer⁠1.

Another example could be a customer of a physical product. From a brand that neglects the consumer at the end. Maybe that customer now feels abandoned and alone when they need to dispose of that item. We see this type of thing happen with coffee makers and their capsules. Or printer ink cartridges. Or mobile phones, when people would rather store the product than put it in the wrong place. Customers then feel alone not knowing what to do. Although these brands might receive a less extreme reaction to their brand equity, it will be dropping.

Brands can do better. There are plenty of ways to change the engagement at the end of the consumer lifecycle to one that is a positive brand experience. Not only to minimise the damage, but to maximise brand equity, lay down positive memories and long term brand preference.

1 https://www.zendesk.com/blog/the-impact-of-customer-service/