How to Win Back Customers Who Stopped Coming

By Alva Chew · Updated 2026-11-04

In short To win back customers, start by asking the regulars you still see why they cut back, then fix the cause and make the first visit back easy. Research on lapsed customers found a low price to bring them back, followed by normal prices, worked best in one study, and asking face to face beat emailing in another. A points balance already sitting in a customer's phone gives you a natural reason to say hello again.

Who counts as a lapsed customer?

A lapsed customer is someone who used to buy from you on a rhythm and has stopped, with no sign they plan to return. The hard part is that nobody announces it. A regular who skips three weeks may be on holiday, or may have found a new lunch spot.

Researchers who model repeat buying run into the same problem. In their 2005 paper in Marketing Science, Fader, Hardie and Lee describe a setting where customer “dropout” is unobserved. The model assumes customers buy at a steady rate for a period and then become inactive, and the firm only sees the purchases that did or did not happen. For you, that means a gap is a signal to look closer, not proof of loss.

A practical rule for a café, restaurant or shop:

Take the customer’s normal gap between visits. A weekly regular has a gap of about a week.
Count a customer as lapsed after several of those gaps with no visit. For a weekly regular, that might be six to eight weeks.
Treat anyone with a much longer normal gap, such as a twice-a-year customer, as active until that long gap has passed twice.

This rule is our suggestion, not a researched standard. Pick numbers you would be comfortable explaining to a regular.

Source: Fader, Hardie and Lee, “Counting Your Customers” the Easy Way, Marketing Science 24(2), 2005, read from the paper.

Why do customers stop coming?

You cannot win someone back with the wrong fix, so ask first. Most lapses come from a short list:

Reason	What it looks like	What you can do
A bad visit	Slow service, a wrong order, a rude moment	Apologise in person, fix the process
A change you made	Price rise, smaller portion, a dropped favourite	Explain it, or bring the item back if enough people ask
Convenience	They moved jobs or homes, or a rival opened nearer	Little. Be there when they pass
Forgetting	Nothing went wrong and the habit faded	A friendly prompt at the right moment
Cost	They are cutting spend	A clear, small reason to come back, such as a reward they can see

Only the second and fifth rows involve a price decision. The others are service and memory problems, and a discount does not fix them.

What does research say about winning customers back with a discount?

One of the few academic studies of this exact question is Thomas, Blattberg and Fox, published in the Journal of Marketing Research in February 2004. The authors argue that winning back customers who have lapsed or defected deserves attention alongside retention. They noted that a common tactic is to lower the price to reacquire a customer. They then modelled both whether a customer returns and how long the second relationship lasts.

Question	Their finding
What pricing approach was best for the firm they studied?	A low price to reacquire the customer, then higher prices once the customer had returned
What else do they cover?	How to target lapsed customers for reacquisition

Source: Thomas, Blattberg and Fox, Recapturing Lost Customers, Journal of Marketing Research 41(1), February 2004. We read the abstract only, not the full paper.

Two cautions apply to a small shop. The finding comes from one firm’s customer data and the abstract gives no percentages, so treat it as a direction rather than a number to copy. And a deeper discount to everyone teaches regulars to wait. Our page on loyalty programs versus discounts covers that trade-off. If you offer something to a returning customer, keep it small, tell them it is a welcome back, and let the usual prices apply on the next visit.

Why does asking in person work better than a message?

You run a counter, so you have a channel most online businesses lack. A 2016 experiment by Roghanizad and Bohns in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology compared asking strangers for a favour face to face with asking by email.

Request type	Share who agreed (Experiment 1)
Face to face	About 70%
Email	About 10%

Source: Roghanizad and Bohns, 2016, as summarised by the Association for Psychological Science. Experiment 1 used 45 college students, each asking 10 strangers to fill out a short survey. The researchers call the findings somewhat exploratory and say replication is needed. We read the summary, not the journal article.

This was a survey request among students, not a shop and not a return visit, so it does not predict your win-back rate. It does support a plain habit: when you see a former regular, speak to them. A direct, friendly question gets more yes answers than people expect to get.

How do you win customers back without messaging them?

Everything below happens at the counter, on the street or on the floor. None of it needs a campaign tool.

List your names. Ask each staff member to name five regulars they have not seen for a while. Staff usually know more than any report would show.
Ask, then listen. When a lapsed customer walks in, say you have missed them and ask what they have been up to. Do not open with an offer.
Fix a cause out loud. If the reason was a slow queue or a missing item, tell them what changed. A specific fix is more believable than a general “we hope to see you more”.
Make the return easy. Have a ready first-visit-back line, for example a free add-on or a small treat on the house, set by you and given by hand. Keep it to one visit.
Show what they already have. A member who left still has a balance. Ask them to open their card, and let them see the points and what those points buy. The sense of progress already made is a stronger reason to come back than a new promise.
Say thank you when they come back. Staff should note who returned, so the next conversation starts from there.
Go to where they are. If a former regular works nearby, a short hello on the street is also a face-to-face request.

Be honest with yourself about volume. These steps work on tens of customers, not thousands. That is the right size for a single shop.

Should points expire to push lapsed customers back?

It is tempting to use an expiry date as a nudge. The research on that is mixed, and an angry customer is harder to win back than one who simply drifted away. Our page on whether loyalty points should expire sets out the studies, Starbucks’ own terms and a gentler default. Gimify’s facts do not include an expiry or reminder feature, so this page does not rely on one.

How do you know it is working?

Count the people on your list who bought again within a month of you speaking to them. Compare that with the same count a month earlier, when you did nothing. Your customer retention rate and repeat purchase rate are the larger numbers to watch, and our guide to measuring loyalty program success shows how to read them without over-claiming.

If members seem to ignore the program altogether, the cause may be sign-up or reward clarity, which why customers ignore loyalty programs covers.

How Gimify fits

Gimify keeps each member’s points balance on their Google Wallet card, so a customer who returns after months can open the card and see what they have earned. It does not send SMS or email campaigns, so winning customers back stays a counter conversation. Gimify is free for one outlet, and US$99 a month covers unlimited outlets.

Questions owners ask

How do you win back customers who stopped coming?

Work out who has actually gone, find out why from the ones you can talk to, fix what you can, and make the first visit back easy. At a counter, the most reliable channel is a short, friendly conversation when someone returns or when you see them nearby.

Do discounts win back lapsed customers?

Sometimes. Thomas, Blattberg and Fox (Journal of Marketing Research, 2004) found that for the firm they studied, the best approach was a low price to win the customer back and higher prices once they had returned. That is one firm's data, so test a small offer before you repeat it.

How long before a customer counts as lapsed?

Use your own rhythm. A customer who normally visits every week and has been away for two months is lapsed. A customer who visits twice a year is not. Researchers who model purchasing treat the moment a customer drops out as unobserved, so a gap alone does not prove they have left.

Should I send an email or message to lapsed customers?

Gimify does not run SMS or email campaigns, so this page sticks to what you can do in person. If you do use another channel, a 2016 study found face-to-face requests succeeded far more often than emailed ones, in a small student experiment.

Can a points balance help bring customers back?

It can give you a reason to speak. A member who stopped coming still has a balance on their Google Wallet card. When they return, you can show them what they have already earned and what it buys.