Designing a customer experience that keeps clients engaged, happy, and loyal is critical to reducing churn and driving long-term success. The key to a successful customer experience lies in understanding what makes clients leave, proactively addressing those issues, and constantly working to improve the customer journey.
Here’s a proven 7-step formula to help you design a customer experience that sticks, reduces churn, and keeps your clients coming back for more.
1. Identify the Churn Goal and Tell the Team
The first step in creating a customer experience that sticks is to set a clear, measurable churn goal and communicate it to your entire team. Your churn goal should be specific—for example, reducing churn by 20% over the next six months. This gives everyone a concrete target to work toward and ensures that reducing churn becomes a company-wide priority.
Once you’ve set the goal, it’s essential to make sure every department understands their role in achieving it. Whether it’s your Account Management (AM), Customer Experience (CX), or operations teams, everyone should know that minimizing churn is a critical objective. This creates alignment and ensures that all actions taken across the company are moving in the same direction—toward client retention.
2. Research and Identify the Reasons Why Clients Cancel
To design an effective customer experience, you need to understand why clients leave in the first place. This requires research into the root causes of cancellations. Start by looking at past clients who have churned—what were the common reasons for leaving? Was it unmet expectations? Poor communication? Lack of results?
In addition to analyzing past data, reach out to current and former clients for direct feedback. Conduct surveys, interviews, or exit questionnaires to understand their pain points and frustrations. By digging deep into the reasons behind cancellations, you can begin to identify patterns that can help inform your customer experience strategy.
3. Create a System to Track Churn Metrics
Once you’ve identified the reasons for churn, it’s time to create a system for tracking the metrics that matter. You’ll want to monitor the factors that predict when a client is at risk of cancelling. This might include declining engagement, missed meetings, or decreased usage of your services.
Build a dashboard or reporting system that allows you to track these metrics in real-time. The goal is to be able to spot warning signs early, giving you the opportunity to intervene before a client decides to leave. This system will become the backbone of your churn-reduction strategy, helping you keep a close eye on at-risk clients and proactively address their concerns.
4. Adapt Your Customer Journey to Identify What Leads to a Successful Client
Not all clients are created equal, and understanding what leads to a successful, long-term client relationship is crucial for building a customer experience that lasts. Review your existing customer journey and identify the touchpoints that correlate with client success. These might include milestones like onboarding, achieving key deliverables, or consistent communication with your team.
Once you’ve mapped out the journey of successful clients, adapt your customer experience to replicate that journey across the board. Make sure every client is going through the steps that lead to positive outcomes. This might involve improving onboarding processes, ensuring regular check-ins, or providing additional resources at critical stages.
By aligning the customer journey with what works, you’ll not only reduce churn but also improve overall client satisfaction.
5. Report the Numbers Each Week in Leadership Meetings
Data without action is meaningless. To ensure your churn-reduction efforts are working, report key churn metrics in weekly leadership meetings. This keeps everyone accountable and ensures that reducing churn remains a top priority.
Leadership teams should review client retention data regularly, looking at churn rates, red flag metrics, and progress toward the churn goal. Use this time to identify trends, discuss any at-risk clients, and brainstorm solutions to prevent further cancellations. Consistent reporting also allows you to make adjustments quickly if the data shows that something isn’t working as expected.
6. Create a Red Zone to Track Clients in Danger of Cancelling
Not all clients are at the same level of risk, so it’s important to create a system for identifying clients who are in immediate danger of cancelling. This is where the “red zone” comes in—a list of clients who are showing multiple warning signs that they might churn.
The red zone should be a priority for your AM and CX teams. These are the clients that need immediate attention and proactive intervention. Whether it’s a personal phone call, a tailored retention strategy, or an exclusive offer, these clients should receive extra care to ensure they don’t leave. By creating a red zone, you can focus your efforts where they’re needed most and potentially save client relationships that might otherwise be lost.
7. Work Constantly to Get Red Zone Clients Back Into the Green
Once a client is in the red zone, the goal is to work relentlessly to get them back into the green. This means finding out exactly what’s wrong, offering solutions, and providing an outstanding customer experience to win back their trust and satisfaction.
Your AM and CX teams should be actively engaging with red zone clients, understanding their pain points, and implementing corrective actions. Whether it’s improving communication, delivering faster results, or adjusting your services to better meet their needs, the focus should be on resolving their concerns as quickly as possible. Regular check-ins, personalized service, and going the extra mile will help rebuild the relationship and get these clients back on track.
Conclusion: A Proven Formula for Retention
Designing a customer experience that sticks requires a proactive, data-driven approach to client retention. By identifying churn goals, understanding why clients leave, tracking key metrics, and focusing on the red zone, you can significantly reduce churn and build long-lasting client relationships. This 7-step formula is a proven method to not only keep your clients satisfied but also to ensure your business continues to grow through a strong customer experience that stands the test of time.