SaaStr Annual 2025 is May 13-15 in SF Bay!! See You There!!
So what can you really do to get churn down, and retention up? Here’s my basic list. Some of it may be obvious, but here’s the thing. Most startups I work with don’t even do half of the items on the list: A few basic thoughts: 1/ Have every customer have a named customer success rep. Every customer. Yes, this is hard if your price point is low. But it can be done. If every customer knows “Casey” is her rep, and who she can turn to … churn will go down. It's almost always worth the investment. 2/ Measure CSAT or NPS constantly, and set quarterly goals to drive it up. If you don’t measure it, you can’t improve it. If you haven’t measured your NPS yet, you may be surprised that it is lower than you think. 3/ Segment your Customer Success — and Sales — teams. Different size customers need different approaches. If you segment your CS team, you can get folks that specialize in different deal sizes and customer needs. And if you segment your sales team by deal size, the smaller customers will get better attention upfront. Leading to less churn. Don’t lump your smaller customers together with the big ones — or they will churn at a much higher rate. 4/ Stop with churn-and-burn deals. Selling deals you can’t service is worse than not closing them at all. 5/ Do phone support. Just do it. No one wants to pick up the phone. But customers that need help want their call answered. 6/ Answer all tickets and chats in < 5 minutes. Yes, it can be done. No one feels good waiting and waiting and … 7/ Visit as many customers via Zoom and in-person as you can. You can’t visit the tiny ones, but at least visit all the bigger ones. The more you visit, the fewer that churn. Zoom isn’t the same as in-person, but it’s much better than not connecting directly. Try to do 6 customer Zooms a week. 8/ Do a weekly webinar for all prospects and customers — every week. This is another chance for folks to get their questions answered. And to learn from each other. 9/ A wiki or answer database alone is NOT enough. Technology alone is NOT enough. Don’t use cheats. There are no shortcuts. People need help from people. Self-service is great for solving some problems, but not for a lot of them. Don’t be lured into thinking technology alone is the answer. 10/ Add a great free trial. If your free trial experience is truly awesome, customers that might churn will select out during the free trial. That’s not all bad. 11/ Finally — let them go. In fact, make it easier to go. Yes, churn is painful. But if you treat them well on the way out, they may come back at some point in the next decade. If you don’t, they’ll never come back unless they have to. What's your top tip?
I would add that organizations should look at the external factors that drive churn and deprioritize sectors or industries that have forced churn and focus on retaining and expanding relationships with clients who are operating in the healthiest parts of the economy. Not all churn can be engineered out of the book. I like how economics looks at the labor market and the 4 drivers of unemployment: frictional, structural, cyclical, and seasonal. Which categories of churn are profitable to pursue and which are unprofitable to pursue? Does the business have a granular and structured understanding of the drivers of churn - and can it identify which is worth pursuing and which is not, Jason?
Awesome list. A few more to add: - Great implementation program - setting up customers for success from the start. Change management is hard and guiding customers through every step and milestone builds early wins. - Adding community element to weekly webinars and/or training sessions - facilitating community help from user to user and expertise exchange - Strategic insights - not stopping at the implementation - if other customers are having success, sharing best practices, benchmarks and insights (fully anonymized) that can be helpful to others
12- always make sure the customer is achieving the key outcomes they signed up for.
All good points - mandate a QBR (at least in upper quartile of ARR). Validate the value of your solution with your champion or super user’s boss - give them business insights they can’t get from their reporting alone (peer/industry scoring, efficiency, effectiveness, etc.
I agree with most in principle - but #1 isn't feasible unless the business makes retention priority 1. And in most organizations, they still treat new business as priority 1.
This post should go viral. Implementing #2, #3 and #7 have done wonders for us Never tried #1, #5, #6. Will implement #8 this month
Turn every ticket and question into a short and clear video that handles questions and educates the customer in 15 seconds or 30 seconds to build an incredible resource on a YouTube channel specifically for this purpose. Make the customer's life easier and make it easy for them to learn how to adopt your platform or service.
My addition to the basic and obvious... Do what you say you're going to do.
SaaS VP Sales/Head of Revenue, from $500k to $120mm. Air Force pilot/veteran. MEDDPICC Certified, data driven. Expert at Build/Train/Lead for teams that close enterprise deals. Pavilion member/CRO School grad.
1yNew/small companies have to differentiate themselves by providing a person on the end of a support line...its one of the best things you can do. Also, go visit them. Listen to what they say is important for their business, and keep track if there is a trend across your install base- there usually is. If a lot of customers want the same new features, build it. Thank them for helping you make the product better.