Question Page

What tactics do you employ to enhance customer retention and reduce churn?

🟧 Hugo H. Macedo 🟧
Advisor & Investor | Product Marketing Expert | B2B | Formerly Pandadoc,Unbabel, McKinsey • January 23

Churn is a consequence, and most often, it is too late. You need to go backward and identify the problems.

Segment the problem:

  • no usage

  • low usage

  • support/technical issues

  • competition

Then, you need to choose what you will tackle first based on volume/value and hypotheses on how to fix it.

For each, you need to dive deep and understand more of the issue. Who's the persona and/or use-case? any specific customer segment (e.g. enterprise customers)

Some hypothesis to start with:

  • No usage - never passed the onboarding phase and was never adopted, the champion could purchase/subscribe but never to implement.

  • Low usage - only a tiny fraction of users or use-cases have activity not enough to deliver the value expected (and paid)

  • Support/Technical issues - how frequent and big is this? Does it relate to the same part of the product? e.g. Integration, SSO

  • Competition - is there a prevalent competitor? Is it price or features? What are the features/capabilities that are better?

Work with the relevant team to understand the problem and evaluate its size and shape. Then, work on potential solutions and use an "effort x impact " matrix to prioritize. E.g., a new feature can solve the problem but can take 6 months to roll out.

Sometimes churn can be a mismatch between Product and Go-to-market strategy, i.e. we're selling the product to the wrong segment with the wrong positioning. Examples:

  • Selling an SMB product to an Enterprise - a sales was made but then roll-out/onboarding hit some implementation "walls" due to lack of features/integrations or proper implementation/rollout management

  • Selling an SMB product to individuals - individuals use a fraction of the features until they get what they want or realize that it's too expensive, too much for them.

This can be checked by analyzing churn by customer segment, in this case.

388 Views
Messaging Group Event
Thursday, January 23 • 8:30AM PT
Messaging Group Event
Virtual Event
Top Product Marketing Mentors
Mary Sheehan
Mary Sheehan
Adobe Head of Lightroom Product Marketing
Axel Kirstetter
Axel Kirstetter
Guidewire Software VP Product Marketing
Leah Brite
Leah Brite
Gusto Head of Product Marketing, Employers
Jon Rooney
Jon Rooney
Unity Vice President Product Marketing
Katie Gerard
Katie Gerard
Workhuman Head of Product Marketing
Sahil Sethi
Sahil Sethi
Freshworks Vice President - Global Product Marketing
Madeline Ng
Madeline Ng
Google Global Head of Marketing, Google Maps Platform
Julien Sauvage
Julien Sauvage
Clari VP, Brand, Content and Product Marketing
Kevin Garcia
Kevin Garcia
Anthropic Product Marketing Leader
Amanda Groves
Amanda Groves
Enable VP of Product Marketing