Negative churn: Ten proven strategies for success - Web Insights
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    Negative churn: Ten proven strategies for success

    September 10, 2021 | 4 minutes

    Brought to you by, Rachel Dettmer

    On average, it is five times more expensive to acquire a new customer than it is to retain one. Therefore, B2B organizations need to prioritize customer retention to prevent churn. It is also crucial that B2B organizations focus on their customer success strategies to increase their customer lifespan as that is where the best ROI can be achieved. 

    Many organizations are focusing on achieving negative churn to increase their revenue from customers. However, getting there and maintaining it is no easy feat. In this blog, we’ll be breaking down the tactics you can employ to uplift your customer success team’s performance to achieve negative churn.

    What is customer churn?

    Churn is a metric used by organizations to calculate customer attrition. Simply put, it is the percentage of customers that have stopped using a company’s product or service in a set time frame.

    Why is it important?

    It’s an indication of the problems with the product or service, sales, customer success management (CSM), or other factors that influence customer adoption. Therefore every organization should work towards minimizing its churn rate, and the closer you can get to 0% or below, the better.

    Net negative churn

    Net negative churn refers to when your expansion revenue from existing customers is more than the revenue lost from existing customers. This metric doesn’t account for revenue from new customers, only existing ones.

    So, what can your enterprise do with the churn they can control to achieve a negative result? 

    Leverage a high adoption approach

    High adoption should always be a focus in generating revenue. With this approach, customers will be less likely to abandon the product or service and be open to finding more value in add-ons and product extensions.

    Promote resource expansion

    An effective way to promote resource expansion is to create different package levels in your product. This creates a good entry point for customers as it allows more freedom over the package they select depending on their needs.

    Employ cross-selling tactics

    Working with your customer success team, you can leverage and foster the relationships you have with your customers to cross-sell to them.

    Prioritize proactive engagement

    Simply providing the product, providing support, and checking in with your customers periodically, won’t cut it. You need to make consistent efforts in identifying the growth opportunities for the customers using your product.

    Increase investment in customer journey mapping

    You need to have a solid understanding of your customer’s behavior to improve their overall experience and reduce churn. 

    Focus on getting honest feedback from customers

    1 in 25 unhappy customers will complain directly to you, the rest will say nothing, and their pain points won’t be addressed. Keeping your customers happy and ensuring your product adds value to them is essential in retaining them. 

    Increase awareness of customers at risk of churning

    Identifying at-risk customers is a popular tactic to reduce churn for B2B companies. In fact, 35% of B2B companies utilize this to reduce customer churn.

    Develop an effective loyalty program

    It pays to invest in and reward customer loyalty. That’s because 80% of customers are more loyal to brands that offer rewards programs. A customer who signs up to your loyalty program is also 47% more likely to buy from you again.

    Refine your customer service

    While this is one of the more obvious methods to reduce customer churn, don’t underestimate how crucial excellent service is to ensure a customer stays with you. As much as 82% of consumers will churn due to bad customer service, not because of a bad product.

    Leverage website visitor identification software

    Website visitor identification software, such as Web Insights, serves as an excellent tool for customer success to leverage in achieving negative churn. This software provides total visibility on your website visitors’ activity, including where they have come from, what pages they have viewed, and how long for – all in real-time.

    These powerful insights enable your customer success team to proactively improve the service provided to customers. With this, you can uplift your retention rates; moving towards achieving negative churn and maintaining it. 

    Meet the author

    Rachel Dettmer

    Content Marketing Manager

    Rachel has over seven years of corporate and award-winning agency experience in marketing and content creation across multiple sectors.