Churn It Up: Navigating the Goodbyes

While we never want to see customer churn, there will come a time when your customer will reach out and share that they do not intend to renew. When this does happen, it is your job to exhaust all efforts to save the account, and if determined that the account cannot be saved, switch to learning mode to help prevent future churn (and hopefully maintain a positive relationship).

Remember, handle this with the utmost grace and professionalism, as a churned customer today is a potential prospect, referral, and reference for tomorrow. The experience a customer has when leaving is just as important as the experience they have when they are starting to work with you.?

We will walk through these three the following steps:?

Step 1: Listen and Learn

Step 2: Create a plan to act

Step 3: Close the loop?

Of course, nothing is ever this simple, so I will break down a few key steps that’ll help you along the way.?

Step 1: Listen and learn

When you are informed that your customer does not intend to renew, first and foremost, seek to understand the reasons behind their decision. It’s important that you listen very closely to both what’s being said and what isn’t. You’ll want to make it a safe space for your customer to share.?

Ideally, you’d want to hold this conversation over the phone (or video call), so if you have been informed via email, ask to get a call scheduled ASAP. How you ask for a call is very important. Depending on the strength of the overall relationship, you may have customers that do not want to get on a call to discuss.? Here is some proposed language that can be adjusted based on your needs.?

“I am so sorry to hear this. I want to learn how we could do better in the future for other customers. Would you be open to hopping on a call for 15-20 mins? I have a few questions that I’d like to ask. I promise I won’t take up too much of your time.”

If the customer declines the call, the best next steps are to escalate to an internal executive, leader, or someone with other relationships within the customer (depending on the contract/company size), hoping they can leverage any established relationships to schedule a call.?

If all else fails and the customer declines a call, ask if they’d be open to answering a few questions over email to help you learn how to do better in the future.?

Once you are on the phone with the customer, remember to seek to learn and understand.?

A few probing questions that can be helpful:?

• Can you talk to me about the reason for your decision?
• What was your overall experience like using our product?
• From your perspective, what could we have done better??
• Is there anything we could do to save this relationship??
• Would you be open to possibly working with us again in the future??

Once you’ve identified the reason(s), there are additional probing questions below that you should/can ask, depending on the situation.?

Remember to take copious notes and/or record the call. This information is gold and will be a very powerful tool to help prevent future churn.?

Reason and potential solutions:?

• Loss of executive sponsor - having more than one sponsor within your customer's org is always important. Having only one sponsor introduces a single point of failure. In the event you do not have multiple executive sponsors, here are a few questions you can ask to help identify if a save or potential future relationship is possible.?
• Is there another tool that you’ve used in the past that helps solve this issue?
• Is there something that is missing from our product/service that does not make us a viable option??
• How was the decision made to no longer continue with our service? Is there something we could’ve done differently to change this outcome??
• Lack of adoption/ usage - digging in early on why the adoption of your tool/service hasn’t happened is important. But, in the event you were not able to get to the root cause and solve it beforehand, here are a few questions to help you diagnose the issue:?
• How was your onboarding experience??
• What could’ve made this a more sticky tool for you??
• Do you know what made your usage decline??
• Can you share with me how this was spun out to everyone in your org? Was there internal training? Internal marketing? (think through change management)
• Features - there will be times when the evolution of your product does not keep up with your customer's needs. It’s important to dig in and understand if these are new needs or maybe a misstep in the sales process.?
• What is the problem you are hoping to solve with this feature? How are you currently solving that problem? What are you hoping to gain if you solve this problem??
• Is this something new that you need? Or is this something you thought existed when you invested in our product??
• Change in needs/ use cases - as our customers grow and evolve, their needs will as well! This is especially true in growing companies or industries going through a lot of change and/or evolution.?
• What system and/or tool will solve the problem that we are currently solving (adjust to fit their specific problem statement)?
• What has caused this change in needs? Growth? Downsizing? Change in your business model? Change in the customers you are serving??
• Competitor - in tech, the switching costs from tool to tool are lower now than ever. This makes it easier and easier for competitors to swoop in and win customers. While it’s important to have a strong understanding of the competitive landscape, where you play well, and where your gaps are, in the event that a competitor does come in and take a customer, you’ll want to get a strong understanding of what is prompting this move, where you are falling short and if there’s a chance to win them back (if that makes sense).?
• What is missing from our product/experience that you will get from the competitors??
• Is there something we could’ve done differently with our contract, price, terms, or otherwise that would make us a more viable long-term partner??
• Pricing/value/ROI - This one is pretty self-explanatory. You must prove ROI. It’s important. Customers will churn if your ROI does not justify the price you are charging and value is not achieved. Learning what could’ve made this a more valuable and viable partnership is important.?
• Were there any gaps in what the product did and what you thought it would do??
• What price point would make this a more viable tool for you and your team??
• Product Satisfaction issues - various things can fall into this bucket, from not innovating fast enough to bugs. If your customer is churning for this reason, it’s important to get a full history of their experience, acknowledge it and dig in on if these issues were not present, would they view you as a viable long-term partner.?
• Communication (lack thereof) - this is a painful one. If you are not in regular communication in one way or another (direct, one-to-many, webinars, office hours, community), it’s a hard one to come back from. A few questions to ask while recognizing and acknowledging that you can do better are:?
• What would a good cadence of regular communication look like for you (ask about frequency, mode, and such)?
• If we were to design something like this, would you be open to us trying it out with you and seeing if that improves your experience??

Step 2: Create a plan to act

There are times when letting the customer go is the best thing you can do for them and for your company, then there are times when trying to save the account is a must. Here are a few guiding points on when to let go, when to attempt to save, and how to do so.?

Letting go

Of course, always ask if there’s a path in which you can save this relationship. Reiterate how important this partnership is and see if they are open to, if not now, potentially exploring a future opportunity to work together. Here are a few reasons I have not attempted to save:

• Wrong product fit. After working through my probing questions, I have determined we are not a fit. There’s no need to save a customer that will ultimately fail down the line. It’s better to preserve that relationship and move on.?
• Unservable expectations. If you are not going to be able to meet their needs with their communication or service requirements, it’s best to cut ties.
• Pricing. If the gap is too large here and no discount is going to get them there, I tend to move on. To be clear, this is in the gray area, as I believe we can almost always come to some kind of mutual agreement, but there have been occasions where the gap is too wide.?

Save

Ideally, you have already incorporated many proactive measures that it never gets to the point of needing to save, but as we all know, churn will happen. Saving an account that is at the point of churning is not impossible, but it’s crucial that you do so in a method that sets the customer, the business, and you all up for long-term success. Discounting so deeply that it makes the partnership no longer viable is never ideal unless you are doing this to retain a strategic logo.??

In general, you’ll want to partner with your manager to figure out the best path forward depending on the situation you are encountering, but a few options are (depending on the reason for the churn):?

• Pricing discounts
• Additional modules (if you are a modular product) at no cost or free for a period of time
• Free and/or discounted seats
• Free and/or discounted training
• Free and/or discounted professional services?
• Adding in more personalized touches (for higher dollar value accounts) such as:
• Onsite visits
• Executive business reviews
• Strategic project management (depending on service and size of contract)
• Having an executive sponsor.?
• Occasionally, assigning a CEO, CCO, or some other executive within your company to have a regular cadence check-in with their executives is a good lever to pull. Don’t pull this too often, or this will quickly become untenable.?
• Offer a dedicated support team (again, depending on the size of the contract and viability). Of course, this team will support other customers, but having the same handful of customer support reps always answering your tickets can make a customer feel very special.?

Step 3: Close the loop?

Whatever the outcome, make sure you close the loop. I suggest a few key activities to close the loop.?

Saved the customer? Great! Congratulations. Ensure you follow through on promises and set the customer and everyone involved for a successful long-term relationship.?

Did not save the customer? Don’t let this moment go by in vain; make sure you are learning from this and passing those learnings on to your entire org.?

Regardless if you saved the customer or didn’t, holding a post-mortem after the fact is a must do!! How I like to run these is getting the group of individuals involved in the account from sales, support, CS, onboarding, product and beyond and having a brainstorming session about:

• What went well
• What didn’t go well
• What are our learnings

Marry this information with all of the learnings you’ve gathered from your customer conversation. Share these learnings with everyone in the company because, as a reminder, we all own the success of the customer!! I highly suggest creating a location in Notion (or some other repository) where everyone in your company can have access to all of the post-mortem notes and learnings.?