4 Proven Strategies to Reduce Churn (in 2022)

Customer churn is one of the most expensive problems in the online economy, with nearly $4 trillion lost globally due to customer churn each year resulting from poor customer experiences.

In this blog, I will show you 4 ways to eliminate churn and increase the retention rate more effectively. Over the past 14 months, my clients have successfully implemented these strategies and saved over $10 million in churn revenue.

Here's how.

What is customer churn?

Customer churn measures the percentage of accounts that stopped doing business with a firm in a given time. It is one of the most widely tracked and discussed measurements in the SaaS industry because churn significantly impacts profit and company growth.

To calculate the churn rate, you need to:

1. Pick a specific time period

2. Identify the total number of subscribers (or accounts) lost vs. acquired

For example, your company acquired 1000 new customers, but you also lost 200 customers in Q4, 2021. Your churn rate would be (200/1000) x 100 = 20%

Why does it matter?

Churn rates reflect how well your business is operating. The higher your company’s churn rate, the more revenue you lose. Simply put, lost customers are lost revenue.

While companies can always get more customers, the acquisition cost (CAC) is more expensive than retention. Especially for SaaS companies, 80% of your future profits come from 20% of your existing customers (Gartner).

Let’s break down the math:

Assuming your first month (initial sale) brings in $1000

Ultimately, the longer you retain the customers, the more profitable your company will be. Therefore, it’s important for companies to understand what is causing customers to leave and reduce churn.

Here are 4 ways you can implement today to improve customer retention and increase your profit.

Laying A Strong Foundation

Having dedicated team members to ensure the growth and success of your customers is critical. They are the key players to help customers succeed.

A high-performing must

1. Help customers unlock value.

2. Understand the customer journey.

3. Bridge the gap between achieved and desired goals.

4. Maintain meaningful relationships and keep customers engaged.

5. Collaborate and exchange information with other departments.

Having a strong CS team will drastically improve your customer experience, which will lead to higher customer satisfaction and a lower churn rate.

Improve Activations

Helping customers realize value early on and quickly adopt the product usage will also improve your customer retention rate. Customer activation happens when the customers fully engage with key features of your product and understand the tangible benefits you provide. In other words, improving the stickiness of your products is one of the most cost-effective ways to reduce churn in the long run.

Here are 3 ways to consider

1. Build a product tour for new users

2. Personalize the onboarding experience

3. Provide a good support service and self-service materials (demo, case studies, FAQ, one-pager, etc.)

Use Data for Insights

Analyzing the data for insights will unlock tremendous growth opportunities for firms. Data allows businesses to measure user performance, identify trends, and forecast outcomes. Successful firms understand that data is more than just a performance tracker. Thus, they leverage data to predict churn, analyze customer health scores, and forecast upselling opportunities.

Here are 4 steps to optimize data for growth insights:

1. Collect and unify data (both quantitative and qualitative values) from all data sources across departments

2. Organize, group, and clean data

3. Analyze and compare findings with industry thresholds and past performance

4. Share insights with the entire company

Siloed data is wasted data. Sharing findings and learnings help create team synergy and ensures that all departments are strategically aligned. And the best way to leverage data is to integrate with Customer Intelligence Software.

Implement Customer Intelligence Software

Customer Intelligence Software (CIS) is a booster for CSMs to elevate their effort and efficiency. The key differences between CIS and most Customer Success platforms are actionable insights and automation. Especially as an AI-driven platform, CIS ensures users always get the most accurate updates while taking care of all the back-end heavy-lifting. In addition, CIS will continuously search and compare the analyzed data with the industry best practices to generate actionable insights.

Here are the 3 most significant benefits of CIS integrations:

1. Holistic customer profiles (churn vs. upsell)

2. Early indicators for churn risks and expansion opportunities

3. Effective ways to prevent churn and increase retention.

involve.ai is the leading platform in the Customer Intelligence Platform. We use Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to help companies prevent churn, grow revenue, and maximize customer outcomes.

Leading the Customer Intelligence Movement, involve.ai focuses on empowering your team with data-driven intelligence to achieve transformational growth.

Watch our free Demo here.

Conclusion

Although churn is one of the most expensive problems in SaaS, many firms can eliminate this issue through 4 practical ways:

1. Build high-performing CS teams

2. Increase Activation

3. Use data for insights

4. Implement Customer Intelligence Software

Join the Customer Intelligence Movement today and learn how you can unlock transformational growth within 10 days.