5 simple churn optimisation techniques

If you run a subscription or membership-based business, then churn management will be your most critical performance indicator. But even if you don’t, the ability to increase the lifetime value of your existing customers through meaningful engagement, will help drive growth and improve profitability.

Here are 5 practical churn optimisation techniques that aim to trigger a positive emotion and reduce customer churn. They work for businesses large and small and are equally relevant for both B2B and B2C customers. These techniques will help you to deliver a truly personalised experience. They will reinforce the trust that your customers have in your brand, and affirm why they chose you in the first place.

1. Messaging apps

Messaging is not so much a channel as method of communication; it is the way that many people communicate with friends and family every day. Offering support via messaging is super-convenient for customers who may not otherwise reach out to you, and in a single conversation, your brand will be immersed within their daily life. Mixing bots and agents will enable you to respond instantly and give meaningful responses. Plus, your customer will never lose the thread of the conversation, unlike platform-based channels where issues often get resolved and closed.

2. Conversational surveys

Conversational surveys use messaging + AI to identify sentiments and topics that are important to your customer rather than focusing on the issues that are important to you. The AI functionality responds in real-time using both text and sentiment analysis, so the experience is conversational and far more relevant to the customer than a traditional questionnaire.

As well as being simple to implement, the effectiveness of conversational surveys is also simple to measure; your net response rates and data quality will tell you how your customers feel about the experience compared to filling out a form. An uplift in verbatim comments will also generate more actionable insights, so this survey format is definitely worth testing.

3. The element of surprise

Creating a frictionless CX is a mantra across most businesses these days; we all strive to make easy things simple. When we talk about a frictionless experience, we are usually striving to create one seamless, intuitive action. We want customers to be focused on the thing that we want then to do, rather than the steps they need to take to achieve their objective.

However, if you can interrupt the flow of a customer journey by triggering a positive emotion, then you will create a memorable moment that will help to tip the loyalty scale and demonstrate how your business is constantly innovating to find new ways to meet their ever-changing needs.

4. Reaffirm their decision

Reminding your customers why they signed up with you at the start of your relationship is always worthwhile. Whether you helped to solve a problem, improved their well-being, or took them on a voyage of discovery, life is surely better with you in it, so make sure you remind your customers of that on a regular basis.

5. Demonstrate your brand values

Showing your customers what you believe in is way more powerful than just telling them. If you succeed in triggering a positive sentiment, then you will win their loyalty. So, if you are making production improvements that use less plastic then shout about it, or if your organisation makes a positive contribution to your community then share your story. You may not be able to measure the effect of a feel-good message very easily, but if you are doing it anyway then there is no reason not to tell the world.

Lastly, don’t be put off by the difficulty in accurately measuring the effectiveness of these techniques. Precision multi-channel attribution can be hard to implement, particularly if some of your communications take place off-line. All five of these suggestions are easy to implement and don’t involve any significant technical resource to implement, so a simple A/B to determine the net effect of each change should be enough to plan your next move.

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