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Greg Daines
Jun 9, 2023

23 Ways to Reduce Churn

This week:

 

23 Ways to Reduce Churn in 2023

My new eBook is here!! Download your copy now: https://www.churnrx.com/23-ways-to-reduce-churn


THE BACKSTORY:

As a founder-CEO in SaaS, I discovered that the hardest challenge I faced was making my customers successful - consistently - and at scale. 📈


When I applied the customer success "best practices," they didn't work very well. And I eventually realized something was wrong with our basic ideas about customer retention.


When I searched for knowledge based on solid data, I came up empty-handed. Nearly everything that passes for "customer research" has been little more than customer surveys and anecdotes. 💬


THE DATA: 📊

So I decided this had to be solved. For the last several years, I've been working closely with many of the world's best SaaS and subscription companies collecting and studying real customer data to answer the big questions about why customers stay and what really works.


📕 This new eBook [link below] is the product of many years of research on millions of customers. And the results are astonishing!


This eBook:

✅ Documents conclusive results of dozens of new quantitative studies

✅ Answers the biggest questions about why customers stay

✅ Settles debates that have gone unresolved for years

✅ Reveals exactly which methods drive the highest customer retention

✅ Lays out the most important KPIs for improving performance

✅ Shows how the best companies achieve exceptional retention


👉 This report is your ultimate cheat sheet for conquering customer churn. 👈


This is the most important thing I've ever written, and I sincerely hope you find it valuable. I would love to hear your thoughts and experiences. Please share your reactions below.



 

Recent Webinar: Kristi Faltorusso & Greg Daines on Reducing Churn

(6-8-23)


A few weeks ago I got to see my friend Greg Daines which was great. But you know what's better, hosting a killer webinar with Greg where he just drops knowledge bombs left and right.


Greg and the team at ChurnRX recently put together a report, 23 Way to Reduce Churn ( you can go to their website and download the report) and Greg and I had the opportunity to go through a few of our favorite ways to reduce churn with a few hundred of our closest friends 😉

I picked a few of the ones I was most interested in discussing with Greg so yesterday we tackled the following:


7. Target Larger Customers

10. Identify Every Customer's Results

12. Require Onboarding For Every Customer

15. Focus on Disengaged Customers

16. Track Time to First Results

17. Stop focusing on Satisfaction


We literally could have spent an hour on each topic but managed to make a few good points and tell a few stories around these 6.


Here are my notes and thoughts:


7. Target Larger Customers: This won't always make sense for your business; if you target SMB then going after mid-market or Enterprise might not make sense BUT you'll have have be realistic about your target market - you will absolutely experience higher churn as a result.


10. Identify Every Customer's Results: We know that your customer's don't always know what their goals are or what to anticipate from your product but it's your job to be clear on what their pain is and highlighting how your product/service can solve that.


12. Require Onboarding For Every Customer: Even if you have a longtail and are building out a scale program there are ways to track if your customers are going through and completing Onboarding successfully. Customers who "opt-out" of or don't complete onboarding have a significantly higher churn rate.


15. Focus on Disengaged Customers: Yes, but focus on how you can keep your customers engaged. If you run into an exec who punts the project to their admin and walks away, you have to find a way to bring them back in. Once you lose them, you've lost them.


16. Track Time to First Results: You need to track, socialize and celebrate a first result ... We don't need to accomplish their goal in a few weeks but you have to accomplish something that will obviously help them get closer to their goal. That milestone recognition is critical.


17. Stop focusing on Satisfaction: Customer Satisfaction has 0 impact on customer retention! Stop trying to delight and make your customer happy - that does not impact retention.


Obviously we had so much more to say so you'll have to go listen to the recording when it's available. But I do have some good news, looks like Greg and I will be doing a part 2 so we can tackle a few more with all of you. ↓


 

Upcoming Webinar (6-15-23): Kristi Faltorusso & Greg Daines on Reducing Churn - part 2


This week I'll be back on with Kristi Faltorusso to continue our tour through the many intriguing findings and recommendations in my new ebook, 23 Ways to Reduce Churn in 2023. Don't miss it!


Be sure to follow Kristi Faltorusso so you don't miss the registration link as soon as it is available: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristiserrano/



 
THERE'S A BETTER WAY TO MEASURE CHURN

There's a much more effective way to measure and manage your REAL churn. I'll gladly show you how to do it with a FREE CHURN ANALYSIS of your real data! (click the link below ↓)


Get your Free Churn Analysis and start measuring your churn accurately with the ultimate Churn Dashboard!

 

CHURN CHEAT #5: "Good Churn"


Is there ever such a thing as "good churn"?


In a word: NO.


This ridiculous concept keeps popping up in many places to refer to various things...

...all of which are idiotic!


⓵ EXAMPLE 1: Bad-Fit Churn

I've often heard people suggest that some churn is actually "good" because it filters out customers who can't win.


👉 Customers who can't get good results with your offering should never have been sold in the first place. 👈


Everything that happens with bad-fit customers represents a drain on the organization. That's why bad-fit churn is arguably the absolute WORST churn of all!

​

⓶ EXAMPLE 2: Temporary Customers

Others use "good churn" to refer to those customers who only needed the solution temporarily and will be back when they need it again.


Why would this be good? These customers are showing that your solution is not needed continuously, which undermines the entire logic of a subscription business.


If many customers leave after achieving good results, it points to a serious problem with your offering that must be addressed, or it will ultimately be impossible for the business to achieve durable growth.

​

⓷ EXAMPLE 3: Legacy Customers

In this scenario, "good churn" refers to customers from an old, deprecated version of the product, or leftover from before a major pivot.


This is mostly about being honest. It's essential to acknowledge the inevitable churn that is the result of a business disruption or transition. But it is just silly and phony to pretend such churn is somehow "good."


► For recurring or subscription businesses, customer churn is always bad. Every lost customer represents costs, time, and effort down the drain.


Even when we technically "made money" on the customer before they left, all their future revenue walks out the door with them.


So it doesn't matter if it's inevitable, or who's at fault, customer churn will never be a good thing.


 

QUOTE OF THE WEEK:


High customer retention is the outcome of aligning everything in the business to produce, measure, and materialize customer results.



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