Top 3 Tips to Prevent Customer Churn
Three tips to prevent customer churn: align sales, CS, and product; keep a communication cadence that fits each customer; and watch engagement for red flags.
TL;DR
- Three tips to prevent customer churn: ensure alignment between sales, customer success, and product; follow a communication cadence that fits each customer; and monitor engagement to catch red flags early.
- Customers churn when they're oversold or promised something the product can't deliver, so cross-team alignment across the full lifecycle is the first defense.
- A slump in on-platform engagement — fewer logins, unused features, no community activity — is often a precursor to churn and a signal to put an action plan in place.
As a modern customer success professional, you probably read all the books on delivering incredible customer experiences, follow all the thought leaders on LinkedIn who share tips and tricks on daily customer engagement, and check your favorite blogs regularly to stay up-to-date on industry trends. What’s one thing all of these outlets have in common? They are all focused on keeping customers around, keeping them happy, and helping them reach their goals.
At the end of the day, delivering on your promises, staying engaged, and being there to answer questions is what truly makes a difference for customers. However, customers do sometimes churn for unforeseen reasons all the time. Preventing customer churn goes beyond one great conversation or a quick check-in to see how your contacts are finding value in a new product feature.
Here are some tips to prevent customer churn:
1. Ensure alignment between sales, customer success, and product.
When customers are misled, confused, or unsure about their solution and what to expect. The best way to overcome this confusion early is to ensure that your internal teams are fully aligned throughout the entire customer lifecycle. Unfortunately, the pressure is often put on the shoulders of a CSM if a customer was oversold or promised something from sales that the product cannot deliver, which can lead to an unfortunate customer experience.
2. Follow a consistent level of communication that works for the customer.
All customer accounts are not created equal, which means that different customers may require different levels of engagement. A successful customer success team will recognize what unique cadence works for specific customers and then stick to this schedule, regardless of who can make the calls. This helps ensures nothing critical slips through the cracks that could eventually lead to a decision to churn.
3. Monitor customer engagement internally and recognize red flags.
One of the easiest ways to get ahead of customer churn and proactively work with customers to turn things around is to monitor on-platform engagement.
- Are users logging into the platform?
- Are they leveraging all of the features available?
- Are they engaging with other user resources like online forums or LinkedIn groups, if available?
All of these can be used to measure engagement, and often a slump in engagement can be a precursor to churn. If you see a concerning metric like this, it should be a sign for your team to jump into action and work directly with the client to put an action plan in place.
Want to learn more?
You can get more insight on preventing customer churn and developing an end-to-end customer lifecycle focused on growth with these additional resources from ClientSuccess:
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