Customer Retention: Beating the Churn-Monster

Let’s face it. Unless you have a passion for making your own gourmet butters, there’s very little that’s good about bringing up the subject of churn in Customer Success. And for anyone not in the know, churn is the loss of customers or subscribers. It doesn’t matter the reason, you’ve lost their business.?

For the Customer Success professional who might be skirting a fit of panic because this is exactly the prospect on the horizon for too many of their customers, here’s something to consider: it’s not all - maybe not even mostly - your fault. Also, sometimes churn isn’t actually a bad thing.

Let me explain.

First, churn is bound to happen one way or another. Perhaps your product was a good fit for the customer for a long time, but you’ve both changed and evolved and that alignment no longer exists. Maybe the fit between you and the customer was more hopeful thinking than actual synergy and the relationship just isn’t working out. In business, relationships aren’t typically expected to last forever.

So what should the Customer Success professional do if churn is going to happen anyway?

My thinking on this really got going while taking in a webinar on the impact of ‘bad’ customers and what to do about it - what can be done to properly manage the relationship so that if churn does indeed happen, it’s far in the future or it’s the only recourse left to either party.

As the incomparable Julie Andrews sang in 'The Sound of Music', “Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start”... because churn isn’t a single person’s responsibility, it requires a team strategy. And that begins even before the customer has committed to your company.

Here are a few ways to make that happen:

• Make sure that the messaging is clear and uniform across the board. This means that Marketing, Sales, Customer Success, Product and everyone else, is aligned on what the product is, what it does, and what the customer is offered. That way, everyone’s on the same page and after the deal is done, the customer doesn’t get unpleasantly surprised with new information that might’ve affected their buying decision.?
• Recognise that your product isn’t for everyone. Know who your ideal/perfect customer actually is instead of who you think they might be. The clearer you are on that, the more intimately you know their needs and the more accurately you will be at satisfying them. There’ll be no ‘bad’ customers, only the RIGHT ones.
• Customise the customer journey to your ideal customer. The closer you can align your actions to the needs of your customers, the better you’ll be able to understand and serve them.

Do you see where these suggestions are going? They’re striking right at the heart of what Customer Success is supposed to be all about - proactive thinking and strategy, as well as engagement and involvement by EVERYONE, not just the CS professional.

What if your company doesn’t have this approach? Don’t fear: all isn’t lost, but the solutions may take a little more effort.

• Ask the right questions. Reframe your thinking from ‘Why are my customers leaving?’ to ‘What made them stay?’. This can help you shift focus from the deterioration in the relationship, to remembering all the reasons they chose your company in the first place, and can point you in the direction of mutually satisfying options for salvaging things.
• Use your data and historical records. Revisit the times when things were good and study what worked and why. Now go look for when that changed. Chances are, there will be red flags along the way to show where customer dissatisfaction started to become an issue, and provide a basis for possible solutions.
• Double down on delivering value. This might require eating some ‘humble pie’ in a candid conversation with the customer, but the objective is to salvage communication, reconnect with their goals and rediscover just what’s keeping them from achieving their desired outcomes.

In these ways, churn doesn’t have to seem like the big bad boogeyman looming just out of sight, waiting to pouch and steal your customers away the moment you slip up. It will take its place as a potential negative outcome the CS professional - and the company at large - can mitigate through proactive planning.

And if you want, here’s one more strategy for elevating your chances of beating the churn-monster into the dirt: lobby for your customer success team to have executive access to the places where the decisions are ultimately made, because as my mentor has wisely pointed out, ‘relying on customer success to fix customer retention issues after the fact is like expecting the last runner in a relay race to make up for everyone else’s mistakes’.