Introduction
Churn, though unwelcome, is an inevitable reality, especially in the B2B SaaS world. Instead of viewing churn merely as a loss, consider it an opportunity to delve deep into understanding customer behavior and transforming these insights into valuable lessons for improving your business. This guide will outline a proactive approach to handle and understand churn, ensuring every lost customer becomes a stepping stone toward better retention and customer satisfaction.
Step 1: Conduct Post Off-boarding Surveys
When a customer decides to leave, it's essential to understand the reasons behind their decision. Gathering this feedback efficiently from departing customers is key. Our article on "Conduct Post Off-boarding Surveys to Understand Reasons for Customer Loss" will guide you through the process of implementing a post-churn feedback process, which includes automating survey distribution and collecting actionable insights.
- Key Activities:
- Implement a post-churn feedback survey
- Automate survey distribution using Journey Orchestrator
- Collect and analyze feedback to identify key reasons for churn
Step 2: Perform Post-Churn Root-Cause Analysis
After gathering feedback from churned customers, the next step is to perform a root-cause analysis to delve deeper into the underlying reasons for churn. Our article on "Do Post-Churn Root-Cause Analysis" provides a detailed approach to analyzing churn data, defining reason codes, and leveraging surveys for comprehensive insights.
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Key Activities:
- Develop and deploy comprehensive surveys to gather detailed churn reasons
- Define primary churn reason codes and contributing factors
- Analyze collected data to uncover patterns and trends
Common Reasons for Churn
In your analysis, you may encounter several common reasons for churn. Recognizing these can help you address underlying issues more effectively:
| Full Churn Reasons | Downsell Reasons |
| Lack of Perceived value to CRM | Overbought |
| Mergers and Acquisitions | Non-standard Use-case Financial Troubles/ Going out of business |
| Re-Org/Reduction of team | Mergers and acquisitions |
| Financial Troubles/ Going out of business | Poor or long onboarding |
| Poor or long onboarding | Re-Org/Reduction of team |
| No non-CRM data OR hard to integrate data | Unused Entitlements |
| Weak admin | Competitive Pressure |
| Perceived cost of ownership | Cost Pressure |
| Perceived ease of use | |
| Product Bugs or Unfulfilled Product Gaps | |
| Non-standard use-case | |
| Competitive pressure | |
| Poor product fit | |
| Lack of Strategy |
What’s next
While churn may initially evoke disappointment, it serves as a catalyst for organizational improvement. Understanding and addressing customer churn is essential for the long-term success of any business. By adopting a proactive approach to churn management and leveraging the insights from post off-boarding surveys and root-cause analysis, you can transform losses into opportunities for growth and improvement.
Stay tuned as we dive deeper into each of these topics, providing you with actionable insights and practical guidance on leveraging the Gainsight platform to its fullest potential. Happy reading!