Summary
The churn rate or attrition rate is a performance indicator closely monitored by companies with strong profitability stakes. A high churn rate and a volatile customer base seeking alternatives can have a significant impact on finances. That is why organizations implement innovative anti-churn strategies to retain their customers and ensure their growth. What are they?
Improve My Customer Relationship8 effective anti-churn measures
Below, we have summarized eight methods to combat churn. They are detailed further in the article.
| Anti-Churn Action | How to Execute the Action |
|---|---|
| Identify and understand the causes of churn | Identify the types of churn and the underlying factors to adapt the solutions |
| Personalized Communication | Personalize exchanges with customers thanks to their preferred communication channels |
| Segment Your Customer Base | Divide customers into groups to effectively target retention efforts |
| Re-engage Inactive Customers | Deploy reactivation campaigns with personalized offers |
| Implement a Loyalty Program | Offer benefits to loyal customers to strengthen their engagement |
| Produce Relevant Content | Provide useful and informative content to support customers |
| Remain Proactive | Anticipate issues and maintain regular monitoring of customer satisfaction |
| Offer Quality Customer Service | Ensure attentive and responsive customer service to retain customers |
Anti-churn: How to fight against churn?
Anti-churn or customer retention refers to the initiatives taken by a company to prevent customer loss. They are crucial to ensuring profitability and growth of the organization.
Customer retention includes various actions such as improving the customer experience and personalizing offers. The underlying goal is to establish a strong relationship with customers and encourage them to remain loyal to the company.
To develop an effective anti-churn strategy, it is essential to start by identifying the reasons why customers decide to terminate their contracts.
These reasons can be diverse and varied. By understanding them, you can then take specific measures to rectify the situation. Let's see in detail how to proceed.
1. Identify and understand the causes of churn
Before going into details, let's briefly review the different types of churn, as the approaches to address them vary depending on their nature.
- Voluntary or active churn: It refers to a conscious decision made by the customer to cancel or stop using the service due to dissatisfaction, changing needs, financial constraints, or other personal motivations.
- Involuntary or forced churn: It occurs when customers are deprived of a service even though they have no intention of disengaging. This type of churn often happens due to payment issues such as an expired payment card or administrative problems, for example.
- Passive or gradual churn: It happens when customers gradually drift away from the service, usually due to a lack of engagement or interest, again without formally deciding to leave. A common example is when a user downloads an app and gradually stops using it over time.
Once the nature of churn is identified, the same should be done for the factors. Here are some of them. Of course, this is not an exhaustive list, and each sector has its specificities, including in terms of churn:
- User experience issues
- Quality of products/services
- Unsatisfactory customer service
- Price
- Competition
- Evolution of customer needs
- Poor communication
Pay attention to the behavior of your customers. Some signs do not deceive, and their detection can help you build an effective strategy. We will address this topic further, but for example, if you receive numerous negative reviews, by phone or online, try to identify the cause.
Keep up with your customer knowledge management, as well as purchasing behavior, visits, analytical data from your application, etc.
In the end, to succeed in your diagnosis, you will need to ask yourself five questions:
- Who are the customers who churn?
- Why do they leave? What are their motivations?
- When do they leave?
- How do they terminate? What is their journey?
- Are there already anti-churn measures in place? What are they?
2. Communication: Have a personalized approach
To combat churn, it is essential to personalize each interaction, whether it's via email, SMS, or phone. Avoid generic messages as much as possible!
The word "personalization" may seem daunting because in the collective imagination, it is synonymous with wasting time. But in reality, personalization is not as time-consuming as one might think:
- Create email templates that use the [Names] and [First names] of your customers.
- Communicate with the customer according to their preferences: via email? SMS? Through their instant messaging application?
3. Intelligently segment your customer base
Segmentation goes hand in hand with personalization. It is crucial to identify the specific characteristics and needs of each customer group, allowing you to target your retention efforts more effectively.
In practice, you can segment your customers based on their location, purchasing habits, or preferences. This way, you can adapt your strategies for each group. For example, offer exclusive benefits to a group that frequently purchases from you.
4. Reactivate inactive customers through re-engagement
As mentioned earlier, inactive customers pose a high churn risk. You can implement re-engagement campaigns by ingeniously combining channels and sending them personalized special offers. If you try to reactivate your customers by email, use an impactful and engaging email subject that creates a positive emotion.
Pay attention to the content of the email by personalizing it using your various customer knowledge tools.
5. Implement a loyalty program
A well-designed loyalty program strengthens the relationship with your customers and reduces churn. Offer rewards or exclusive benefits to loyal customers, or implement a referral program. Adapt your program based on customer feedback to ensure its effectiveness.
6. Produce relevant content
Provide your customers with useful and informative content, such as guides, tutorials, or case studies. For example, if you are a software company, create video tutorials to help your customers use your products and facilitate their onboarding. Show them that you are there to help and support them at all times.
7. Stay proactive
Anticipate potential issues and address them promptly to reduce churn. Implement regular customer satisfaction tracking through surveys, send contract renewal reminders in advance, demonstrate your commitment to your customers and their challenges. Always strive to exceed their expectations.
8. Provide quality customer service
The band-aid solution for a gaping wound is not sustainable. To ensure that all your measures work, offer 5-star customer service! It is one of the keys to retention.
Train your agents to resolve problems quickly and efficiently while being available, responsive, friendly, and attentive. With good customer service, you have the power to turn negative experiences encountered by your customers into positive ones.
To go further
Have you successfully regained your customers? Good for you...but...it's not the end. The connection you have with customers who were on the verge of leaving remains very fragile. It is not guaranteed that an offer, no matter how attractive, fully meets their needs. Your retention measures must be complemented by a second onboarding plan, once again, personalized.
In conclusion, a good retention strategy requires human and financial resources, and must align with the overall business policy of the company. Offering benefits incurs costs, so it is essential to allocate your budget wisely to ensure the effectiveness of your strategy.
Ensure that your business tools are compatible with the anti-churn measures you wish to deploy. The communication platform offered by Ringover has the advantage of integrating with helpdesk and CRM software to help improve your productivity and save time.
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You can further enhance your customer understanding by using AI, specifically conversational analytics solutions like Empower. These solutions provide insights into the quality of interactions with customers, as well as their content on a large scale.
Indeed, the tool is capable of transcribing each phone conversation and detecting keywords of your choice. For example, you can configure Empower to detect all keywords related to unsubscribing.
To learn more about how Ringover products can help you implement your anti-churn strategy, request a demonstration or try our products for free. No credit card or banking details are required.
Churn FAQ
How can you retain a customer who wants to cancel?
Here are 8 steps to take to retain a customer who wishes to leave:
- Identify and understand the motivations and reasons
- Personalize your communication
- Segment your customer base
- Reactivate inactive customers
- Implement a loyalty program
- Create relevant content
- Be proactive
- Provide 5-star customer service
What is a good churn rate?
The "good" churn rate or reference attrition rate can vary depending on various factors such as industry, business model, and company size. A low churn rate is generally considered positive, as it means that you retain a large number of customers over a given period. The ideal churn rate will depend on your specific business and goals.
It is essential to monitor and regularly evaluate your churn rate to understand trends and take measures to reduce it if necessary.
What is the relationship between churn and retention?
Churn and retention are closely related but opposite concepts. Churn refers to the rate of customer unsubscriptions or cancellations over a given period, while retention refers to the ability to retain existing customers and build their loyalty.
In other words, churn represents the loss of customers, while retention encompasses all actions taken to retain these customers and encourage them to renew their subscription or remain loyal to your brand/company.
The higher the churn rate, the less effective the retention, and vice versa. Reducing churn and improving retention are common goals for companies to maintain a strong and sustainable customer base.
