Only 63% of customers place a second order

30 September 2026

We counted, on the Odoo of a security equipment distributor, how many customers come back after their first order. 1,843 accounts had placed at least one confirmed order. 1,163 placed a second. That is 63%. More than one customer in three never returns.

After that, it settles

The surprising number is not the 63%, it is what follows. Among customers who reached three orders, 83% placed a fourth. Among those at four, 84% placed a fifth. The curve is flat from the third order on.

In other words, loyalty is not built over ten years. It is decided between the first and the second order. A customer who has ordered twice is, statistically, an acquired customer. A customer who has ordered once is a trial.

The usual gap, learned from your own customers

At this distributor the second order arrives, in median, 51 days after the first. The third, 42 days after the second. The fourth, 38 days after the third. The rhythm tightens as the account settles in.

Those numbers are theirs. A food wholesaler will see 7 days, a machine builder 14 months. That is why they should never be hard-coded in a tool: they have to be recomputed from your history, and recomputed often.

What Odoo does not show

Odoo knows customer X ordered on 12 July. It does not know that customers like X come back in 51 days, and that today is 20 September. No standard report lists "one-order customers whose second order is late". Yet it is the most profitable list in the company: every name on it has already bought, already knows your prices, and no longer needs convincing that you exist.

What to do, concretely

• Follow up at the median, not before. A customer chased on day 20 when the norm is 51 feels harassed. Chased on day 55, they feel looked after.
• Stop at the 90th percentile. At this distributor, 90% of second orders arrive within 417 days. Past that the customer is lost, not late, and should drop off the morning list.
• Ignore trial orders. A first order of 80 € is not worth a call. Set a floor (500 € here).
• Treat the second order as the one that matters. Not the first: marketing handles that one. The second is the salesperson's.

How ERP-BI does it

Every night, ERP-BI recomputes these gaps from your confirmed orders, step by step. Every morning, the email lists the customers at one, two or three orders who are past the usual gap but not yet past the point of loss, with the amount already spent and the days of silence. The first-to-second step is flagged as the priority, because that is where the 63% is decided.

Your numbers will not be 63, 51 and 417. That is the point: they are in your Odoo, and you do not know them yet.