Step-by-Step Guide on Dealing with Churned Customers

Customer churn is painful. You just suffered a customer loss, a fall in revenue, and potentially even damage to your reputation. What do you do? Well, first of all, don’t panic! Losing customers is inevitable for any business, however, you, of course, want to keep this to a minimum  In this blog, we are bringing you a guide to implement effective churn management and how to respond to churn requests. Continue reading to find out the different steps to take when dealing with churned customers. 

1. Get in touch with the customer

Being professional to the end is the best thing to do, so naturally scheduling a meeting or so-called exit meeting with the customer is the first thing to do. There are many benefits of trying to form communication (either by reaching out through emails, having a phone conversation, or having an online/in-person meeting) with a customer. The first one is that you can potentially stop the churn. Your customer will have a reason for churning so by hopping on a call or meeting with them you can offer them solutions on how that problem can be resolved and hopefully they will see the value of your product/service with new solutions.

If however, the customer is dead-set on churning, then you have to make sure that you are leaving on a good impression. By staying professional you will be positively remembered by employees. This is invaluable. Churned customers may regret their decision and decide to rejoin in the future. Remember that employees also change companies, and it may be the case that an employee's new company is the perfect fit for your product. Also, it’s not all about financial loss. Yes, your revenue is very important but don’t think of only that when trying to stop a churn. Look at this as a learning opportunity. Knowing what customers have a problem with allows you to improve that area so you can prevent future churn.

2. Keep everyone informed 

Understanding churn is not just for customer service managers. All departments are ultimately responsible for the final product/service, and that is why you need to share the voice of customers (VoC) among the whole company. By listening to VoC, it will be easier to understand and address customer loss. For example, a large percentage of customers abandon the entire product/service because of poor customer service. This tells you that you need to identify the exact problem area in your customer service and fix it accordingly. A good practice to implement is holding meetings with all departments on a monthly basis where you can discuss churn trends. This way you are practicing effective communication within the company and staying on top of your data, making it easier to react quickly and make data-driven decisions.

3. Confirm and investigate the problem

Once you have had an exit meeting with the churned customer and found out their reason for churning, it's time to dig deeper. When we say dig deeper we mean to try and figure out if there is a recurring problem or more of an individual problem. By understanding this, you will be able to improve the problem right away and prevent more at-risk customers from churning. The way you will approach this task is by identifying companies that have the same or very similar qualifications (e.g. number of employees, type of industry, and contract value) as the churned customers. Then get in touch with these customers and find out if they have the same problems as the churned customers.

4. Document customer loss data

For you to be able to understand and prevent future churn, it’s crucial that this is properly documented.. By documenting, reporting and analyzing your churn data you will be able to better identify signals of customers that are at a churn risk. Some of the signals are:

1. Sudden stop in product or feature usage.
2. They delay their payments and renewals.
3. Sudden communication problems for example canceling check-in meetings, or not answering calls or emails.
4. Choosing to downgrade from the current plan ➡️ either they are reconsidering your product or service or they are struggling financially.
5. They have done, or intend to, to complain to you about your product/service.
6. Change of managers in the company may result in a new manager not seeing the value of your product/service.

5. Be tactical 

There is no point in crying over spilled milk. Sometimes churn is inevitable and can be a good thing. For example, sometimes churned customers may have not been the right fit for your company, so it's best that you parted ways. By doing so, you saved yourself a lot of resources and time trying to make something work that was never meant to be. In the end, it's always best to focus on providing the best customer experience to ensure customers' loyalty.

Plecto and churn management 

By now, you will understand that a huge part of churn management is data, especially making data-driven decisions and reacting quickly to those data changes. In order to achieve this, use Plecto. Plecto’s real-time dashboards enable you to visualize your KPIs and data in real-time, thus giving you the power to react quickly and make data-driven decisions. 

Sign up for a 14-day free trial and see for yourself how Plecto helps you stay on top of your data.