10 Tips to Reduce Customer Churn

If you're dealing with a churn issue, you're not alone.

根据集线器's 2021 State of Inbound report，超过50％的公司指出，产生潜在客户和提高客户满意度是明年的最高营销优先事项，在过去的几年中一直保持一致。

现在，我不在乎读者，但是我愿意打赌，为企业产生新需求的斗争很容易与斗争有关keep existing customers around.

虽然减少搅动听起来像是一项巨大的工作，但绝对值得优先考虑：增加5％customer retentioncan increase profits by 25% to 95%,according to research from Bain & Company.

We'll walk through a few strategies for reducing churn below. But first, let's start by defining the term to establish some common ground.

目录

• Customer Churn

• 客户流失分析

• Types of Customer Churn

• How to Identify Customer Churn

• 如何减少客户流失

Customer churn -- also known as customer attrition -- refers to the rate at which customers who purchase or subscribe to your product or service offering end their relationship with you and stop bringing in revenue for your business.

Let's say, for example, that you started the quarter with 500 customers and lost 25. That would leave you with a churn rate of 5%.

在大多数情况下，该数字被认为是一个百分比，但是正如InboundJuntion的Nadav Dakner所表明的那样，您应该以最有意义的业务陈述数字。

In his article for Kissmetrics,Dakner notes the following as alternative ways to demonstrate customer churn:

• Number of customers lost
• Percentage of customers lost
• Value of monthly recurring revenue (MRR) lost
• MRR损失百分比

客户流失分析

Causes of Customer Churn

客户流失的原因can be personal and unique to each customer, but they usually fall under a few common categories:

价格

价格是销售人员和客户成功经理的普遍反对意见。如果客户找到了他们想解决的问题的更具成本效益的解决方案，他们可能会搅动。这就是为什么建立价值和客户入职和教育很重要的原因，使客户认为购买值得。

Product/Market Fit

Poor product/market fit is a common reason for customer churn and speaks to the need for close sales and customer service alignment. If salespeople are hustling to hit quota and aren't incentivized to sell to good-fit customers, the result will be churn within a few months of purchase when the customer realized they can't achieve their goals using your solution.

User Experience

如果用户对软件或应用程序的体验对他们来说是越来越小的，故bob电竞官方下载障或其他困难，那么他们将不太可能定期使用它并使用它来建立专业知识，从而使他们更有可能坚持下去。

客户体验

最后，如果客户的经验与品牌的其他方面联系在一起 - 您的营销内容，社交媒体渠道，客户支持团队和客户经理 - 并不是积极的，那么他们可能很可能会流失。客户希望受到他们支持的社区的欢迎和珍视，如果他们没有与您的公司互动的积极经验，他们就不想坚持下去。bob全站app

While these factors typically cause customer churn, there are few different types of churn you should be aware of as well. In fact, you might be surprised to find that some churn is actually good for your business.

Types of Customer Churn

1. Revenue Churn

Revenue churn is slightly different than customer churn, but it's still important to consider when you're analyzing this metric. Revenue churn is the amount of revenue that's lost within a given period. This doesn't necessarily mean you're losing customers, but rather you're not making as much money from yourcustomer baseas you did before.

This can happen if customers downgrade to a cheaper subscription or version of your product. While they're still shopping at your business, they're spending less money than they did before. This is a metric that your customer success team will want to keep a close eye on especially as they monitor your most loyal customers.

2.竞争者干预

每个企业都有其竞争对手，总会有一些客户将您留给另一家公司。bob全站app这不是理想的，但是它发生了，您不能花所有的时间担心它。

It's more important to focus on why these customers are leaving you for your competition. Are they a bad fit for your business? Or, is it something you're doing that's pushing them away?

Once you can figure out the cause, you'll know which customers you should work to keep, and which ones are going to leave your business anyways.

3. Unsuccessful Onboarding

For some businesses, it's common for customer churn to take place at the beginning of the customer journey. That's because these companies typically don't offer an onboarding program that teaches the customer how to use the product or service. That means it's up to the customer to figure out how the product works and how it can meet their needs.

如果您要购买米饭，则可能只需要在盒子侧面打印一组方向即可。但是，如果您要为经营业务的软件支付数千美元，那么您可能会从软件提供商那里获得更多。bob电竞官方下载在这些情况下，您甚至可能会为您提供入职专家，他们可以教您如何使用产品以及如何为您的短期和长期需求进行个性化。

4. Desired Feature or Functionality

顾客crave personalized experiences, which means most will expect your brand to create new features or products that solve their needs. If you have a diverse customer base, some may be disappointed when you roll out a new product or feature that feels irrelevant to their goals. While this new product may be great for the majority of your target audience, there may be a lingering segment that feels your brand is going in a different direction than what they expected.

这是一种客户流失的类型，并不总是一件坏事。如果您的品牌实际上朝着新的方向发展，那么这可能会以某些客户流失为代价。只需确保积极监视您的流失率即可确保其上升不会高于您最初的预期。

5.公bob全站app司关闭

If you're a B2B business, then you may have customers that go out of business or merge with another company. Most of the time, these instances are unavoidable and are part of working in a B2B environment. This is where your客户获取策略变得很重要,因为它平衡你的客户churn rate.

6. Underappreciated Brand Values

类似于“不良适合”的客户，有些人可能与您的品牌价值不符。例如，如果您的公司以提供环保产品而自豪，那bob全站app么您可能会遇到一些不重视这种制造过程的人。取而代之的是，这些客户比购买“绿色”产品更专注于较低的价格和快速交付过程。

So, do you give in and conform to these customers? Or, stand strong with your brand values?

如果您屈服，则可以在短期内节省这些客户。当然，他们一开始会很高兴，但是当新竞争对手降低价格并迫使您远离环保价值时，会发生什么？您是否继续摆脱最初使您的品牌成功的原因？

客户为您的飞轮供电，但是，就像汽车一样，将正确的燃料放入发动机很重要。如果您与目标受众的错误部分相吻合，那么您的品牌将在长期以来遭受痛苦。取而代之的是，他们会从您最忠实的客户那里收集反馈，因为他们将分享与您品牌价值观保持一致的愿景。

7. Plateaued Growth

随着公司的发展，bob全站app它也会改变。您的客户群越来越大，您雇用了更多员工，您可以提供更多吸引更多受众的产品和服务。

这种类型的变化非常适合您的业务，但有时可能以客户流失为代价。例如，假设您最初提供了一种免费产品，您现在意识到，如果客户与另一组产品打包，则将愿意支付。尽管这种变化将带来更多的收入，但您可能最终会失去只想要免费产品的客户。现在他们必须为此付费，他们将继续前往另一家不收费的公司。bob全站app

这是自然客户流失的另一个例子。是的，您一开始就失去客户，但是您正在用新的客户代替他们，这些新客户将为您的产品或服务支付更多费用。

With churn coming in many shapes and sizes, it can be difficult to recognize what's natural churn, what's negative churn, and what isn't churn at all. To make sure you're aware of all types happening at your business, read on to learn how you can identify a pattern of customer churn.

How to Identify Customer Churn

Establish Customer Churn Metrics.

The first step to identifying customer churn is determining what churn means for your company. Depending on your business model, churn may mean the customer cancels a subscription, uninstalls your app, or doesn't return to purchase your product after a certain period of time.

Whatever it is for your business, you'll need a set of metrics to monitor customers that are at risk of leaving your company. That way, you can set clear benchmarks for when you think a customer is about to churn. Once a customer falls below any of those benchmarks, you can reach out to see if there's anything you can do to make them happier.

You can document and track these metrics with集线器's free Customer Service Metrics Calculator, which can help you identify when your churn is getting to an unacceptable rate so your company can course correct.

Download for Free

Gather Customer Feedback.

Sometimes customers will tell you directly when they're unhappy. For example, if you send them anNPS surveyafter a customer service case, customers will provide feedback about their experience with your brand. And, this feedback is both quantitative and qualitative, so you can easily identify which customers are upset with your business and see why they feel that way.

与您的客户成功团队签到。

Rather than waiting for customers to tell you how they feel, you can dispatch your customer success team to find out for you. It's this team's job to monitor individual accounts and reach out to users who are unhappy with their product or service. That way, your team can immediately clear any roadblocks for customers instead of having them reach out to your support team.

最多customer success teamswill check in regularly with their customers. Even if they don't have a problem to solve, these meetings are great sitreps that provide up-to-date information for how the user is feeling. As more trust is developed during these conversations, customers will be more likely to voice any concerns that may have with your business.

优先考虑主动客户服务。

积极的客户服务means your business is actively trying to identify and solve problems before they affect the customer experience. During this process, it's common to uncover points of friction that you may not have been aware of before. By correcting these issues, you can see how they influence your churn metrics and whether or not they were a significant cause of customer churn.

监视社区论坛和第三方评论网站。

您可以利用的另一个方便资源是您的community forumas well as third-party review sites. Community forums are where your customers come together to talk about your products and services. If you notice the same users bashing your products again and again, then you know these people are at a higher risk of churn than those who are posting positive comments.

第三方评论也是如此。给您公司最低评级的人是最有可能离开您的业务的人。bob全站app如果可以的话，请回复这些评论，看看您是否通过公司的客户支持渠道之一与客户联系。bob全站app

Now that you know what customer churn looks like at your business, let's talk about what you can do to reduce it.

1.依靠您最好的客户。

For a lot of businesses, solving for churn means identifying a pool of customers that are most likely to cancel, and refocusing your efforts to keep them on board.

但是，哈佛商学院的爱德华·卡特（Edward W.

Rather than redirecting time and resources to retainingany客户生产的边缘,Gupta recommends businesses focus their attention onthe most profitable客户的饮食边缘。

“如果我向最有可能流失的客户提供动机，他们可能不会离开公司，但这对我来说会盈利吗？传统方法专注于减少流失，但我们认为该目标应该是最大化利润，而不是仅仅使利润最大化bob全站app减少搅动，”Gupta解释.

In addition to refocusing your efforts towards the most profitable customers, Gupta suggests you consider the likelihood that a customer will respond to your re-engagement initiative -- whether it is a phone call, email, or larger promotional package.

2.主动进行沟通。

By reaching out to your customers before they need you, you're demonstrating that you're invested in helping them get the most out of your product or service.

But not any old outreach will do. The type of message or resource you send to them should be directly tied to their product or service usage.

For example, if someone signs up for your product or service and you notice that they aren't leveraging all of what's available to them, you might send them a friendly nudge.

After signing up for SEMrush, I received the following email, encouraging me to check out a whole bunch of features I hadn't explored yet:

By surfacing these features early, SEMrush was able to ensure that I wasn't overlooking the tool's capabilities -- helping to keep me both interested and active.

3. Define a roadmap for your new customers.

Getting started with a new product or service can be overwhelming. And if a customer can't figure out how to navigate your product or service right out of the gate, they'll likely lose interest -- fast.

为了简化过渡，设置一个新客户入职process or roadmap to guide new customers through your product or service's features, functionality, and process. This approach makes it easier to manage customer expectations while giving you complete control over the pace at which you're surfacing more information.

顾客that feel empowered to achieve success with the help of your business are less likely to leave, so it's important that you're constantly monitoring and iterating on your onboarding process, keeping an eye out for snags or blockers.

Looking for inspiration? Here are a couple of onboarding emails I received from Grammarly -- after signing up:

Welcome Email

请注意，“欢迎电子邮件”如何介绍许多流行功能，以帮助我使用该工具。

New Products + Features Update

This email, sent about a week after I signed up, details all of Grammarly's latest updates and improvements. By sending this to new users, Grammarly is able to communicate its commitment to improvement, while introducing a handful of new ways for users to use its services.

4. Offer incentives.

Give customers a reason to stick around by offering them something special -- a promo, discount, loyalty program, etc. This small effort can go a long way when it comes to showing your existing customers how much you value their business.

When determining when to surface these incentives, there are a few things to consider. For one, you'll want to think about the customer's timeline: If they are approaching the end of their contract and you're worried they might not renew, providing a discounted renewal rate could be the push they need to stick around.

Another thing to consider is the客户的需求. If you predict that a customer is going to cancel after realizing that your product or service isn't what they were looking for, incentivize them to stay onboard while you work on building out a feature or strategy that will help them accomplish their goals.

后者是Baremetrics的人们在收到因缺乏功能而准备取消的客户的反馈后采用的策略。

"We'd offer a discount on their next month of service to tide them over while we finished up what it was they looking for,"Baremetrics的创始人Josh Pigford解释说。

影响？这项小的努力帮助他们节省了准备取消的15％的帐户。

5.经常要求反馈。

Customer frustration, which can ultimately lead to customer churn, surfaces when there is confusion around a product or service or a lack of effective support around a particular issue.

But those concepts are vague. And getting to the root of the specific issues plaguing your business requires you to take the time to collect feedback early and often.

取决于您的业务需求，创建一个客户的反馈意见循环就像设置调查或反馈表并发送电子邮件一样容易。让我们检查一下过去品牌如何完成的一些示例：

美元剃须俱乐部

↓

Wayfair

↓

PayPal

These surveys and rating requests show the customer that you're committed to getting better -- that you're always improving.

围绕客户对产品或服务的经验来获取反馈和见解的另一种方法？在线聊天。

If you have a live chat feature enabled on your website, you can monitor those conversations to surface trends, FAQs, and common roadblocks that could be preventing your customers from seeing the full value of your product or service.

6.分析搅拌发生时。

If you're waiting until a customer leaves your business, you're already too late to do anything about it. Instead, you should be using data before customers churn in order to build strategies to proactively prevent it.

无论您在上面的步骤中投入了多少努力，Churn都是任何业务的一部分，它将发生。关键是要利用您的客户（和快乐的客户）预测客户幸福和客户不满的关键迹象，以便您可以与客户互动并在他们搅动之前挽救关系。

首先，从分析开始。顾客什么时候最经常搅动？他们第一次开始使用您的产品或服务后30、60或90天？如果客户在不使用产品或服务的情况下使用特定的天数，会发生流失吗？弄清楚典型客户如何以及何时发生流失。

Then, get feedback as outlined in Step Five above. Are customers leaving for specific reasons? What are their objections that led them to cancel or stop purchasing? Figure outwhy churn usually occurs.

Then, put these trends together so you can forecast churn before it happens, and reach out to those at-risk customers with tailored incentives and offers to re-engage them.

For example, here's an email my colleague,Sophia Bernazzani，连续参加了几个Soulcycle课程后，还没有预定其他任何其他人：

SoulCycle most likely determined that a three-month gap in workout class attendance signaled churn, so they offered her a free class -- which got her back in the door for a few more classes.

7.保持竞争力。

市场状况正在不断变化 - 随着新软件和技术进入该空间，客户的需求和需求将不可避免地发生变化。bob电竞官方下载

企业专注于下一步 - 趋势，技术和产品进步 - 在避免中断或“下一件大事。”

And while keeping your product or service on the cutting edge is important, it's also important that your customer success and support efforts remain relevant. To ensure your competitors aren't lapping you, make note of their customer success initiatives.

Are they responsive to questions on social media? Do they have live chat enabled on their website? Do they have an extensive知识库?

从他们的策略中获取线索可以帮助您的业务更好地为客户服务并保留其忠诚度。

8. Provide excellent customer service.

Of course, a great way to reduce churn is to provide excellent customer service. Your service reps should be empowered to solve for the customer when they're working on fixing an issue or answering a question. This might mean that they have to spend money to make things right with a customer.

Many of the big companies that you think about like Amazon or Zappos are huge companies because they focused on customer service from the beginning.

提供出色的客户服务是在竞争对手中脱颖而出并减少客户流失的好方法。

9. Create a community around your customers.

顾客are loyal to brands that have built a community around their products, service, and customers. This means that your marketing team can work on community management by engaging with customers, creating a Facebook group, or even planning events for valuable customers.

当您创建一个社区时，客户倾向于保持更忠诚，这将减少他们在出现问题时搅动的可能性。

10.为您最有价值的客户提供客户成功经理。

Another great way to reduce customer churn is to employ customer success managers that make sure all your most valuable customers are taken care of.

客户成功经理将为客户提供有关如何充分利用产品或服务的提示。此外，它们是您宝贵客户的主要联系点，因此他们可以直接与某人接触，而不是等待前线客户服务代表。

Stop Churn In Its Tracks

Churn can really take a toll on your business -- but only if you allow it to. Reroute your company's trajectory today by applying the tips we outlined above.