Meet me at the churning point ??...or in London ??

Like a splitting headache on a Friday night, some design issues can bring you to the?churning point...

When was the last time you reached a?churning point?with a tool you're using? I've had a few recently...

Watch video on Sendspark

But is it a point of no re-churn??

In all fairness, what inspired me to write today's newsletter was Allissa Chan's and Neel Desai's new show,?Churning Point, by Paddle (no, sadly, again I'm not paid to say this ??) - who are mercilessly trolling SaaS products by signing up (as a paid customer) - just to see what the cancellation flow looks like.

They took on?Lavender.ai?as their first "teardown patient":?

According to Paddle:?

• Once your customer hits that "cancel" button, you have on average?18 seconds?to try to reach out & save them???
• Lavender allows you to cancel within 1.9 seconds - this is simply not enough?friction in your cancellation flow!

If you're on the same boat - here's how you can prevent your users from?taking a churn for the worst?in just 3 steps:?

• STEP 1: tap into "loss aversion"?- point out the things your customer's gonna lose if they proceed with the cancellation - maybe they just hit the cancel button in that moment of frustration with your product after a bad user experience:?

STEP 2: make a salvage offer?- If you're not giving your customer a salvage offer, it's simply like you don't?care that they are cancelling in the first place. Offer your customer a discount, a?downgrade to a cheaper plan, or at least a subscription pause. See this example from Asana:?

???you'll find plenty more examples of good cancellation flows for inspiration?in our post here

• STEP 3:?Ask the customer to fill in a?short churn-survey?*before* they've cancelled?- because when they're gone, they're gone -?and sending that churn survey in a follow-up email will just deprive you of valuable feedback. Make sure you include the options that you think are likely the cause of churn *and* leave the cancelling customer the?opportunity to leave a longer answer, if there was another reason (maybe a bug you're not even aware of!).

• ?? This sweet?"nevermind, I don't want to cancel."?last-ditch effort can still help you save some customers.?

After this, conduct a?churn analysis:?

• Start by tracking?feature usage data?to see how often the users engaged with your most valuable features. If they didn't adopt them at all - no wonder they were churning.?
• Check their health scores, NPS scores and other feedback they've submitted over their lifetime.?
• Tap into any conversations they have had with your support agents and customer success team, and any surveys they submitted after their tickets have been resolved.?Try to understand the friction points in their user journey.?
• Rinse and repeat every month.?
• You can also try to?predict churn?by?analyzing customer behavior, such as page views. Monitor your page views?for any noticeable spikes or dips in your product usage?and resolve any issues that come up.
• Use?customer segmentation?to analyze and prevent churn. Group customers based on their jobs to be done?and then track feature engagement per segment. Find disengaged users who aren’t using important features and send them in-app messages to engage them.
• Use?machine learning tools, such as Amplitude, to identify high risk customers who are likely to churn.
• ?Measure customer satisfaction?regularly. Unsatisfied customers will churn fast, so?send regular surveys, such as?NPS surveys, to gauge how customers feel and then proactively fix issues before it’s too late.
• See how one of our customers, Osano,?used Userpilot to reduce his churn rates here.?

Anyway, hope I won't?meet any of you at the?churning point???

Let's meet in London instead??

We're throwing our first-ever live event and for a good reason: as some of you may know already, we've turned?Product Rantz into a physical book!?

You're all invited! But please?RSVP?as ya know, health and safety capacity limit is still a thing???

Plus, most importantly, I need to know how many pizzas to order...

Do you know there's a?product?for that????

Hope to see you there...

Meanwhile, see you next week!