Creating Loyal Customers & Advocates with WinBack

An Interview with Megan Bowen

In this article, Megan Bowen shares her six-step process for winning back past customers. What makes Megan’s process so impressive is that after a customer is won back, they not only become very loyal, they can actually become advocates delivering positive word of mouth and new business referrals.

Dan Pfister: Before we dig into customer winback could you share a little about yourself?

Megan Bowen: I’m the Chief Customer Officer at Refine Labs and prior to this I spent 15 years in the B2B SaaS tech space. I was typically in either account management, customer success or owning all go to market functions. At Refine Labs, we help companies with their demand generation programs and I’m here bringing my customer success background to help design a world class customer experience.

Dan: Could you share your favorite story around winning back a past customer?

Megan: My favorite winback story comes from the time when I was at a company called Managed by Q. We provided both a tech platform and services for office managers to manage their physical office space.

It was a really interesting product and service where customers had an account and a platform where they could request new services with their service providers and a real human would show up at the office to clean or to paint a wall or perform some other service.

In terms of customer success and the customer experience, you needed to make sure they understood how to use the technology, and you needed quality control measures in place so the in-person human experience also went well.

This winback involved a customer we’d been working with for the better part of a year.

They were getting nightly office cleaning and a lot of other ad hoc services and we had service complaints like the trash wasn’t being taken out.

The customer came to us and said, “I've had too many issues back-to-back and the cleaners aren't working out, so I feel like I've had to make other arrangements. I've found this other provider called Eden and I'm going to switch to them.”

Whenever a customer requests to churn, I think it's a great opportunity to learn more and get feedback, so I requested a call and the client said “of course”.  

I opened the call saying “Look, I'm not having this call to convince you to stay with us. I think you've made up your mind that we've dropped the ball more than you're comfortable with and you've decided to move in another direction. I respect that decision and I understand that we've messed up.

I'd really just like to learn more about your experience to understand what's important to you, where things went wrong and what we could have done better so that we can take that feedback with us going forward.”

Opening up the conversation in that way relaxed her defenses because she knew I wasn’t there to change her mind, she understood I was there to learn.

Then I went through a series of feedback questions like … “Tell me what happened. Tell me what's most important to you. Tell me when you considered looking elsewhere. Why did you decide to go there?” 

I really just unpacked everything that mattered to her. It was a very rich feedback call and I got a ton of really good information along with a solid understanding of what was important to her and why she made the decision to change.

I ended the call with, “I'd love to check in with you in three months to see how things are going with your provider. Would it be okay if I did that” and she said “Of course, it would be great for you to check in.”

We had a graceful transition and made it easy for them to leave. 

Thirty days later I sent her a small bouquet of flowers and a handwritten note basically saying, thank you for your feedback, it was very valuable and we’ve actually made changes based on it.

Ninety days later I gave her a call and she told me “I got your note and your flowers, thank you so much, that was so sweet.” Then I updated her on some of the additional quality control measures we had implemented and a couple of the changes we made to the product that were the direct result of her feedback.

I also asked how the new service was working out. She said it was pretty good and I asked if I could check back in three more months.

When I checked in at the six month mark, she was not happy. Things had started to decline, they had repeated issues and she was actually thinking of calling us because she was so unhappy.

I told her “I'm sorry to hear that. Make sure you're giving that feedback to them because we've been in their shoes, and it's a tough place to be.” 

She was going to give them a little bit more time, but within a month she came back and said “I'm done, I want to come back and work with you guys. I've really appreciated how you've handled this. You've tried to make things better and you didn’t push me into making a decision.”

And when they returned, we made every effort to ensure that we provided the best service, but this time around we were also really careful to manage expectations.

I told her “I can't promise you that everything is going to be perfectly clean every night. It's a human and I can't control them. If you come into the office and it’s dirty, you need to tell us immediately and I'll send another operator that day.”

She was really appreciative and said “I totally get it, I understand and I’ll be more communicative”.

The end result was a loyal customer who ended up staying on for a long, long, long time.

That’s my favorite winback story.

Dan: That's a fantastic story! I love that you showed so much empathy and generated so much trust.

You let them know that you really care, that you wanted to do better and you proved it by acting on their feedback. They could’ve just found another supplier after Eden messed up but they came back to you because of the way you handled the situation.

Do you have a framework for winning back lost clients?

Megan: I break it down into a six-step process.

The first step is to have a conversation with the customer as soon as you learn they’re cancelling. 

Ask them for feedback around the reasons why they’re leaving and make it easy for them to leave.

Don’t try to convince them to stay. That’s always the instinct, but it never results in a positive outcome because you immediately put them on the defensive and they just clam up and will want to end the conversation as soon as possible.

The second step is asking for a commitment to have another conversation.

The third step is showing genuine appreciation. 

A handwritten note or flowers are small touches that go such a long way. They know you’re busy and those gestures mean the world, so find those little opportunities to show you really care.

The fourth step is to take action on the feedback. 

Then follow up to close the feedback loop with something like ... “Remember that you told us this was a problem, well we took your feedback and made changes. You influenced a positive change in the service experience for our customers. Thank you, without your feedback we wouldn’t have gotten here.”

The fifth step is patience.

This winback took something like seven months. I knew our customer was going to try the other provider and I knew they were going to go above and beyond and then at some point they were going to take their eye off the ball and the service would degrade. And that's what happened.

I was patient and I didn't press or push.

When she expressed dissatisfaction with the other provider I didn't say, “you better come back right away”. I knew if she was going to return, it had to be her choice so I didn’t pressure her or back her into a corner.

The sixth step is managing expectations. 

In this winback we were really upfront about what the partnership was going to look like, what was going to work, what wouldn’t work and how we’d solve problems together.

That’s my process and working through all the steps is really important. They’re time consuming and you put the power into your customer’s hands, but I believe that’s what it takes for winback to actually work.

Dan: You mentioned that the customer you won back ended up staying on for a long time. I’ve seen that same thing so often, loyalty is a huge side-benefit of customer winback. Are there any other big benefits to winning back a past customer?

Megan: In this particular case, and it may not be true in every winback, we actually got a lot of new business referrals because of how it was handled. 

If you do it really well, not only do you get the loyalty, you can actually get an advocate. I'm a big believer in this, I believe if you go through a really difficult period with a customer or a really challenging situation and you can come out the other side, your relationship is so much stronger.

Relationships are strengthened through hardship and difficult situations but most people avoid problems at all costs and you can’t do that. If you just lean into them and show up in the best possible way, you’ll create a much more trusting and mutually respectful relationship.

Dan: How would you compare the time and resources needed to reacquire a client vs acquiring a new one?

Megan: Whenever I've had a successful winback it's always been handled within the customer success team. You don’t need additional marketing or sales resources trying to reengage this account because you already have this past relationship to lean on to initiate the conversation.

What I’ve also found is a winback strategy isn’t really about running a report to identify past customers and emailing them to see if they want to meet. I’ve run those campaigns and recovered a couple customers but the success rate wasn't as good as it should have been. 

It's about going through each step of the process I described … there are no shortcuts.

You have to reframe what you do when customers cancel and ensure that you follow through.

The hardest thing about what I described was just making sure that at every point in time I actually followed through on all of the things I said I was going to do. And because it’s hard, a lot of people don't do it. You have to be organized and you have to be determined.

Dan: Are there any big mistakes you see people making with winback?

Megan: Yes, trying to force the process along too quickly. When our client came back to me at six months and said she was unhappy, I didn’t try to convince her to come back.

They need to make that decision on their own. You need to resist the temptation to push for the outcome you want and instead put yourself in their shoes.

I remember telling her something like, “You just made the switch six months ago, you probably don’t want to do this again right now. It has to be a pretty big problem to endure those switching costs again.”

She agreed, “You’re right, I really don't want to do that” and I said, “I get it, I wouldn't either and I'm here for you if you get to that point, just give me a call”.

Three weeks later I got the call.

Dan: That’s a very powerful approach and builds tremendous trust. We’re you able to use that information and story to winback other clients?

Megan: You bring up a really good point I didn't touch on.

All of this information about the difference between a competitor and yourself is really interesting and valuable. We did a couple of things with that information.

Number one, I told my sales team what this competitor is good at, where they fall short and what we need to keep in mind when we're up against them.

And when I ran into a customer that was considering churning to the competitor, I was able to say “I've worked with several customers that have used them and you know what, they're really good at this, and here's where they're weaker and here's how we stack up.”

Not being afraid to call out your competitor’s strengths, not being afraid to call out your own weaknesses and then asserting your perspective that your solution is best can be very powerful because it builds a lot of credibility and trust.

And when a customer isn’t a good fit, I've told them, “We're not the best fit, you should go to the competitor” because getting a customer who isn’t a good fit isn’t good for you or them. It's not worth the short-term revenue.

Dan: Is there anything you'd like to leave us with Megan?

Megan: You should always make sure that you're selling to the right customer and that you have a really great onboarding process so you’re not put in a position where you have to winback a lot of customers.

Inevitably, even in great businesses with great customer journeys, there will be people who cancel and churn and I always recommend that you don't look backward and try to do some mass winback campaign, look forward and handle each new customer cancellation using the sort of framework I described.

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You can find Megan Bowen on LinkedIn where she shares information from her experience on all things marketing, sales, customer success, along with a little personal development and leadership.

Megan is also the host of The Unwritten Playboo?k podcast and is the co-host of the State of Demand Gen podcast.

Refine Labs LinkedIn Company Page – Refine Labs CEO Chris Walker