There’s nothing like the feeling you get when you’ve brought a customer back from the brink of cancellation. You’re a hero and your value to the company is proven.
→ Well, not so fast...
I always had an uneasy feeling after a customer “rescue” when everyone was high-fiving each other and declaring victory. Somehow it just didn’t feel like the story was over.
Well, that feeling turns out to be justified. We have dipped into our vast store of customer data to ask an uncomfortable question:
● Do rescued customers really stay “rescued"? ●
The results confirm my fears. Our data show that most rescued customers won’t stay on track for long.
If you look at the very next renewal, the rescued customers already have HALF the retention rate compared to non-rescued customers.
And this trend continues moving forward where ultimately the majority of rescued customers will churn.
The results actually make sense and confirm my intuition. Which made me wonder why we didn’t know about this already. It seems like this phenomenon should be more obvious.
But I realized that I hadn’t previously ever tracked rescued customers separately. It’s as simple as tagging the account record when a customer is “rescued” and then doing some simple reporting periodically. Apparently, this is a rare practice?
► Do you track your rescued customers specifically?
► Have you seen this pattern?
► Are some "rescue" methods more effective than others?
Please share what you do and what you’ve seen below.