Customer Churn and 10 Data-Driven Inspired Actions to Prevent It.
By Keli Perry
Across industries in the U.S., companies have an average churn rate of 18%. Can your business afford to lose almost 20% of its customers every year? Imagine if those rates were consistent for five years. Now, I’m not a mathematician, but I don’t have to develop the Pythagorean theorem to know a constant loss is not sustainable for any business that wishes to remain a business.
Do you know the number one reason why customers leave? It shouldn’t be difficult to pinpoint. Think of the reasons you leave your business relationships. Poor relationship management? Poor customer service? Poor service offerings? There are many reasons customers choose to go, but all of these have one thing in common: they are completely preventable.
Acquiring new customers is easy enough. Mostly. You have a product that a consumer wants/needs. It’s simple supply and demand. But, keeping a customer that’s a horse of a different color. If your company is not pumping customer retention into everything they do, your business model will not be successful. In many cases, the expected lifetime value of a customer is ten times the value of the initial sale. This means as hard as you worked to sell a product to a customer, you need to work twice as hard to keep them coming back month after month, year after year.
“32% of customers said they would stop doing business with a company after just one negative experience despite previously excellent customer service.” Customers are talking about their experiences with your company even if they aren’t talking to your company about them. That’s why having a customer success strategy is vital to your company’s success.
“Customer churn can be reduced by 67% if companies solve customer issues during the first-time interaction and successfully manage customer expectations.”
So how do we work on preventing churn here at ACDI? We thought you’d never ask.
- Review their goals to ensure adoption sees value early and often.
- Continuously look for ways to expand the use of the solution, so it supports more functionality, thereby generating more business value.
- Offer training for new users to make sure more than one person in the organization knows how to use the solution.
- Strive to maintain/create high-level relationships to keep management on board and to fall back on when a key stakeholder possibly leaves or takes on a new role.
- Ensure more users are logging into the solution and utilizing a broader set of functions to make offerings more sticky (and harder to replace)
- Keep customers up-to-date on the product roadmap, remember what specific things they are looking for, and let them know when they are coming.
- Get customer feedback on features and the future of the product and then listen to their feedback.
- Tracking early warning signs so proactive measures can be implemented before it becomes a crisis.
- Proactively reach out to customers and seek their input and opinion
- Do not ignore negative feedback
Think about the last time you discussed an experience as a consumer with a friend or co-worker. It was either terrible or excellent. We’re not talking about mediocre run-of-the-mill experiences, and our customers aren’t either. If it’s above and beyond, they’re telling people about it. If you missed the mark, they are writing to their congressman. Which means we don’t have the luxury to get it wrong.