How to fail at [customer retention]

A Masterclass in Losing Customers for Good

Picture this: You’ve been a loyal customer of your gym for over a decade—sporadic visits, no complaints, probably worth ￡30k in lifetime value (CLV). The dream customer, right? Hardly ever shows up, yet keeps paying. But when you finally decide it’s time to cancel, maybe—just maybe—there’s a sliver of doubt. “I could be convinced to keep wasting my money here for another 10 years…” So, what happens?

You get the runaround.

Retention team? Who? Nah, they’ll transfer you back and forth between the billing team, membership services, and someone in IT who might handle retention but isn’t sure. Finally, you get an email address to submit your cancellation request, and any flicker of loyalty dies on the spot. Congratulations, you've just witnessed a retention disaster in action. But the gym's not alone.

Think insurance. Your premium goes up again even though you’ve made no claims for years. Any reward for loyalty? Nah. Time to shop around, but the minute you try to cancel, you’re stuck in a Kafkaesque loop of chatbots and call transfers that make you wonder why you didn’t leave years ago.

If you're eager to drive your customers away and master the art of retention failure, let’s dig in. Forget customer loyalty or “value”—this is about total failure. Here’s your step-by-step guide to sending your retention rates into a death spiral.

Step 1: Never Offer Value-Added Services ????

Got an app? Great. Now make sure it’s as useless as possible. Want your customers to love engaging with your brand? Think again. Take that gym membership—why offer guest passes to encourage referrals or help build a sense of community? Instead, keep the app completely transactional. No extra perks, no exclusive content, nothing that remotely sparks joy. Maybe throw in some broken push notifications for good measure.

But why stop there? Look at the insurance industry’s genius approach: Jack up the premium every year without ever offering rewards for loyalty. Why bother? The assumption here is simple—people are lazy, and they’ll stick with you out of pure inertia. Why create a positive experience when you can just ride the wave of consumer laziness? ??

Double down on the long game of neglect: Don’t ever let your app track progress or reward milestones like “10 years of membership” or “5 years of no claims.” After all, creating moments of delight might trick customers into thinking you value them. What a disaster that would be.

But here’s the kicker: eventually, a competitor will step in with better service, a loyalty program, or an app that offers actual value, and you’ll be left scrambling. By that time? Too late. They've bailed. But who cares about the long-term when your strategy wins you short-term profits today?

Step 2: Make Cancelling Impossible (Because Nothing Says "We Love You" Like a Maze) ????

If your customers want to cancel, make it as frustrating as possible. Transfer them from department to department, where no one has any clue what’s happening. Leave them on hold listening to some terrible ‘90s infomercial soundtrack for a solid 20 minutes, and by the time someone picks up, they’ve aged two years.

Don't just stop at poor customer service. Have them send a cancellation email that mysteriously vanishes into the void, forcing them to follow up multiple times. They'll love the confusion and inefficiency—who wouldn't?

Step 3: Treat Your Early Adopters Like Dirt ????

Remember those passionate, loyal customers who were with you when your brand was just a pipe dream on Kickstarter? Forget them. Stop offering any additional perks or rewards—who needs that nonsense? After all, their loyalty is guaranteed, right?

Take a page out of Remarkable’s anti-playbook: instead of rewarding early adopters with continued access to valuable services like cloud storage (what a waste of goodwill!), start charging them for the very features that made them love you in the first place. There’s nothing quite like turning appreciation into resentment to ensure they start shopping around for alternatives.

Step 4: Keep Your Team in the Dark ????

To really drive customers away, make sure your retention team is woefully under-trained. Keep them confused about your products and services, and definitely don’t allow them to resolve issues on the spot. Ideally, they should sound like robots reading from an outdated script. Bonus points if you outsource your customer service to a call center that barely understands your product.

The more disconnected and impersonal the service, the faster customers will flee. If they don’t feel heard or understood, they won’t feel valued—and that’s exactly what we’re going for.

Step 5: Ignore the Data ???

Sure, all those nerds in marketing like to throw around ideas about balancing short-term sales activation with long-term brand building. Data shows that brands with strong emotional connections retain customers longer, and that retention drives profitability. But why let that slow you down? You’re here to fail, after all.

By ignoring customer feedback, market trends, and any insight into customer behavior, you can make decisions based on gut feelings and assumptions. Why track churn rates or identify pain points when you can simply squeeze every last penny from your current customers without worrying about whether they’ll stick around?

Forget all that behavioural science from Byron Sharp and his talk of mental availability. Make it harder for customers to find you, and harder for them to leave. That’s your winning (read: losing) formula.

Final Thoughts: Perfecting the Art of Retention Failure ????

If you're truly committed to tanking your customer retention, make sure every interaction feels like a chore. Offer nothing extra, confuse them with shoddy service, punish loyalty, and for heaven’s sake—don’t ever look at the data. It’s not about building long-term relationships or delighting your customers. It’s about making sure they can’t wait to leave.

Because if they’re not actively plotting their exit, are you even doing it right? ????