Revenue · For Retailers

Walk-in Recovery

The customer who left is still yours.

What is walk-in recovery?

Walk-in recovery is the practice of turning customers who leave a store without buying into leads that carry what they actually said, following up on their timeline with a message that answers their real objection, and attributing the recovered sale back to the original visit.

Also searched as: walk-out recovery, walk-in follow up, lost customer recovery retail. Part of the Walk-out Recovery use case.

Most walk-ins do not buy on the first visit. Most of them share a phone number. Almost none of them are followed up in a way that remembers what they said. Walk-in Recovery makes the second conversation as informed as the first, so the customer who left with a budget, a model and a reason comes back to someone who knows all three.

The blind spot

The advisor is the only person who heard the conversation and the least likely to have time to write it down. So the CRM says “interested, will revert”, the follow-up is a generic message three days late, and the sale goes to whichever store the customer visits next. The most valuable lead a retailer has, a person who walked in and talked for twenty minutes, is treated like a cold one.

And because nothing connects the follow-up to the visit, nobody can say what recovery is worth. The number that would justify the whole effort has never been measured.

What changes

A lead exists the moment a number is shared, carrying the model, the budget, the timeline, the objection and a read on how close the customer was.
The follow-up is written from the conversation. The advisor reaches out knowing what to reference and which objection to answer, in the customer's language.
Follow-through becomes visible: due, done, overdue, per advisor, every morning.
A recovered sale traces back to the visit that started it. Recovery becomes a rate, not a feeling.

What you will know

A queue of warm customers ranked by how close they were, each with the conversation behind them.
Which advisors follow up on time and which let customers go cold.
The recovery rate by store, and the revenue it represents.
The reason each customer left, so the second conversation addresses the real one.

On the floor

A real-estate sales gallery stops losing visitors who did not book on the day. Each one leaves behind the unit they walked through, the budget they stated and the worry they raised, usually possession timeline. The advisors work the follow-up queue with that in hand. Three bookings that month trace back to visits the CRM had already written off, and the gallery knows which advisor's follow-ups convert and which do not.

Questions this answers

Why did that walk-in not buy, and did anyone follow up?
Of the shoppers who leave without buying, how many ever hear from you again?

Frequently asked questions

Does Borentis message our customers directly?

Not today, and deliberately. The advisor who met the customer sends the follow-up, with Borentis behind them. That keeps the relationship and the consent with a person. Fully autonomous follow-up is where this is heading, and it will be a choice you make per store, not a default.

Does this replace our CRM?

No. Your CRM stays the system of record. Borentis makes the record worth reading, and can push what it learns into the CRM and pull outcomes back.

What about the customer's data?

Captured with consent, used for the purpose the customer agreed to, kept for the window you set, and never visible in any aggregate report. The customer stays a person to their advisor and anonymous to everyone else.