Churn Monster: Abandoned

We are now halfway through our Churn Monster blog series and have looked at a lot of common customer churn risks and how you can go about defeating them. This month we are going to be talking about how to save an abandoned customer. By an abandoned customer we mean – someone who needs support or guidance but for whatever reason has unfortunately been neglected by you and/or your company and is left feeling helpless.

This is one of the worst churn risks, because the fault lies on you as the CSM, instead of the customer, however the customer is the one who suffers.

Let’s delve into a scenario that might have caused you to neglect a customer and how you might best salvage the relationship and save the renewal.

The Scenario:

Your company recently went through a bit of a re-org, and the number of Customer Success Managers has been downsized. As a result of this, you have a new set of accounts that have been added to your already busy book of business.

With this transition of accounts, you first focus your outreach efforts on those customers that have an upcoming renewal approaching. You then find yourself spending the rest of your time helping customers put out fires.

It has come to your attention though that one of your recently acquired accounts is very upset because they had been trying to contact their former CSM (obviously to no avail). Without you even noticing it you have neglected the customer and are worried this will be detrimental to the relationship and their likelihood to renew. What do you do?

Plan of Action:

You immediately reach out to the customer and apologize that the account transition had not gone successfully. You then schedule a meeting with them for later that week to have a proper introduction in attempt to get things back on the right foot.

In preparation for this meeting you conduct an audit of their account and their product utilization. You review this with them on the call. You also ask them to share with you their challenges and goals to date. You then use this information to map out a success plan that includes needed support and guidance to help them meet their goals.

You have also since created an Account engagements segment, that looks for Accounts with no logged activities within the last 30 days, and set up an automated task to reach out to Accounts that meet that criteria.

You also have made it regular practice now that before you hang up the phone with the customer you get your next meeting scheduled on the books, so you will leave no customer behind again.

Some time has passed since when you first clumsily acquired this account and inveterately neglected them, and you were able to bounce back and establish a good relationship with the customer. Your automated monitoring has allowed you to be in the know of important events within their account, as well as their progress in reaching their goals.

Although it was a rocky start with the account, they are now satisfied customers and ready to sign the renewal agreement for the next year.

Way to go on beating this churn monster!

Follow the links below to learn about the other churn monsters we’ve covered so far and stay tuned for a new churn monster next month.

• Churn Monster #1 – Disengaged Customer
• Churn Monster #2 – Cash-Strapped Customer
• Churn Monster #3 – Slacker Customer
• Churn Monster #4 – The Victim Customer
• Churn Monster #5 – Manic Customer

Fight Customer Churn!

Customer Success Around the Web

• Whats the System Usability Scale & How Can You Use It? – Everything you need to know about the System Usability Scale (SUS) to measure the usability of your product.
• Achieving Mutual Success with Quarterly Business Reviews – Learn how to improve retention with strategic quarterly business reviews (QBRs).
• What Can Growing SaaS Businesses Do Better in 2019?  – Prepare your SaaS business for growth in 2019 by avoiding these three common pitfalls.