This week:
Churn School: Does EVERY Customer *REALLY* Need Onboarding?
Churn KPIs: A Better Way to Measure Churn
Early Access to My New eBook: 23 Ways to Reduce Churn in 2023
Churn Cheats #4: Delaying or Accelerating Churn
Upcoming Webinar: How To Reduce Churn Fast
Quote of the Week: Start with customer results...
DOES EVERY CUSTOMER REALLY NEED ONBOARDING?
I've often heard: "Every customer is different, so it's best to let each customer decide whether they need onboarding."
WHAT DOES THE DATA SAY?
📈 The data shows that customers who choose to participate in onboarding stay significantly longer (2.4 times!) than customers who waive onboarding.
Why does it matter so much?
The ultimate reason customers stay is because they get measurable results.
But customers do NOT get results unless they change how they work.
👉 The purpose of customer onboarding is to get customers to change how they work in ways that lead to measurable results. 👈
❓ But what if this data is merely revealing who the "good" customers are, and not really showing the value of onboarding?
This is almost certainly true, but there's a big problem:
► Experience tells us that the customers who need onboarding the most are the least likely to choose to participate if it's optional.
Making onboarding optional is a great way to identify 🥱 low-effort customers.
⚠️ But there's a big problem with this...
⛔️ Without onboarding, how will you intervene to help them succeed?
TRUE COMPANY STORY: 🏢
I recently worked with a company offering onboarding for free but participation was not required. Their churn was much too high. I suggested two simple changes that made a HUGE difference in their churn:
⓵ Require onboarding for EVERY customer.
⓶ Charge a modest fee for onboarding.
The result was an 80%+ reduction in their early churn, which massively improved overall customer retention.
THE LESSON IS CLEAR:
⦿ Onboarding is the key opportunity to help customers change.
⦿ Do everything you can to get customers to engage in onboarding.
⦿ Make sure your onboarding focuses on behavior change and results.
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!
EARLY ACCESS FOR NEWSLETTER SUBSCRIBERS!
23 Ways to Reduce Churn in 2023
I'm excited to offer early access for newsletter subscribers only to my latest eBook which will be officially released next week!
This document summarizes 23 actions companies can take to quickly reduce customer churn and the data proving their effectiveness. Each action is supported by compelling data from our benchmark database of real-world customer retention data comprised of more than 1.3 million customer data points.
Here's the link to get your own copy before it's released: https://www.churnrx.com/23-ways-to-reduce-churn
CHURN CHEAT #4: Delaying or Accelerating Churn
This cheat is when a company delays or accelerates the official recording of customer cancellation dates usually to hide a big spike in churn.
A prime example is delaying (or accelerating) churn to move it to another reporting cycle in order to "smooth" churn across periods.
Another situation is to avoid reporting churn until after a key funding or valuation event.
When challenged, people usually attempt to justify this practice by referring to the complexities of contract terms and billing cycles or using other such reporting skullduggery.
👀 This cheat is particularly insidious because it's virtually impossible to detect without direct and deep access to the raw customer churn information.
For the same reason, it is difficult to know how common this practice is. But from what I've seen, it's probably more common than people may know.
UPCOMING EVENT: How to Reduce Churn Fast
Thursday, June 8 @ 1pm ET
New Churn Research Alert! Next week I will be publishing my data backed report "23 Ways to Reduce Churn in 2023" and jumping on a webinar with Dave Blake CEO & Founder of ClientSuccess to talk all about it (Thursday, 6/8). You are not going to want to miss this extremely practical conversation with immediate actions you can implement to drive down your churn.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK...
You start by identifying the customer’s key results for the same reason that you aim before you shoot.
