How to Reduce Churn & Sell More with Customer Insight

How do you sell a software / service that you know little about?

And even more challenging, how do you keep that customer?

Perhaps this is the question you are asking. Perhaps your buyers are excited about your product for the first few days. Then slowly, usage decreases for a day, he no longer wants it. Even though she felt it is amazing, it is not being used because it does not meet her needs.

Is there a shortcoming in the product?

The time to find out is now, before the conversion rate falls through the floor. In fact, if you are optimizing for conversions, then knowing that your customer should be the first step of your plan.

Why is customer feedback so important?

In September 2014, Malaysia Airlines ran a competition where it asked customers to explain, “What and where would you like to stick on a bucket list?” Incentives: Free economy-class tickets.

The marketing ploy was particularly strange and sick because a few days earlier, an aircraft carrying 537 passengers from the same airlines had crashed, causing all the people to fall onboard.

Realizing the bang, he quickly removed all links to the competition, but not before the story was picked up by every media channel in the world and the company’s name was even more malicious.

This is one of the few instances where companies have failed miserably to understand their customers.

Here is another story.

Jc Soon after Penny took over as CEO, Ron Johnson fundamentally changed the business to a value model based on coupons and discounts.

As a result, sales started falling.

For Johnson, who previously headed Apple’s store, it was difficult to understand that J.C. What exactly did Penny’s customers want and took them to the store. (Source)

Acknowledging the necklace, he eventually had to reinstate good ol ‘coupons and deals that customers loved.

Groove reduces churn by 71% by asking the right questions
Back in January 2013, the Groove team discussed just one thing around a kitchen table — why leave their customers so quickly?

If the trend continues, they will have to close shop soon.

They decided to find the root cause and study their customers’ behavior. Diving into customer analysis data from KISSmetrics, they found there were major differences between customers who left and customers who stayed.

Specifically, users who have been with Groove for more than 30 days on average spent approximately 3 minutes 18 seconds using Groove in their first session, logging approximately 4.4 times a day. In contrast, users who spent only 35 seconds using Groove in their first session logged an average of 0.3 times per day.

 But they did not sit on it. They used this to try to change user behavior.

They started sending targeted emails to customers who logged in less than 2 times a day in their first 10 days.

That email received a 26% response rate, and more than 40% of users who walked from their signup were Groove subscribers even after 30 days.

Likewise, if you find that most of your customers are leaving your site on a particular page, then it is time to ask questions about it being wrong.

Monitoring social media is another thing you can do to gather data. Listen to and assimilate what your customers say about you.

For that, you also need to find out where your customers are hanging, which depends on the type of audience. Fashion-loving female shoppers may like to talk about their new dress on Pinterest. More tech-savvy customers may prefer Twitter or LinkedIn.

Let them know. Tools like BuzzBundle can be useful for this.

Intercom.io improves churn
Groove from Akin, Intercom also noticed that there was a decrease in engagement among users who were planning to leave.

They realized that customers do not wake up one morning and decide to stop using the service. It is a slow and gradual process and engagement flags can show what is going on. If your product goes from daily engagement to one week engagement, then it’s time to start doing something.

To counter the process, he set up automated emails stating, “We miss you, please come back.”

But he was clever about designing his campaign. Since the decline in activity could be nothing more than a vacationing user, they took a broader view. Intercom.io is typically used by teams of people working together, so they sent mail only when the group stopped using the service.