Churn Monster: Manic

With Halloween approaching there’s all sorts of spooky things around us, which makes it a perfect time for us to talk – churn monsters!

If you are responsible for customer success or customer retention at your company, you have monsters in your closet. These churn monsters take big bites out of your customer base, which can be very scary. But never fear, we are here to help you learn about these possible customer churn risks and devise a plan to beat them.

This month’s churn monster installment is about a manic customer. A manic customer is someone who is feverishly busy and seems to have a frantic work pace which basically results in an overall degrade on progress.

Let’s take a look at a scenario involving a manic customer and how you might best handle the situation.

The Scenario:

You have been introduced to a new point-of-contact at one of your accounts. His name is Mike, and he recently started as the Director of the department that uses your product. You set up a call to introduce yourself.

Mike seems really excited to be in the new role. You try and get a better understanding of his goals for the team, and one thing is clear – Mike has a lot of ideas. So many that you are having a bit of a hard time understanding what his main objectives are. It also sounds like he has plans to take on other new projects outside of your solution. Through all of Mike’s talkativeness you try and take the best notes that you can.

After the call you sum up your conversation in an email for Mike. He responds back, but at midnight the next day, with additional questions.

You are getting worried that Mike’s scatterbrained behavior is going to make it really difficult to hone in on a sightline for success. What do you do?

Plan of Action:

First, you try to determine the reason for Mike’s behavior. Is it simply because he has started a new job, or will this be a constant state? You hope for the first and decide to help Mike through this process as much as you can for the sake of the account.

You assure Mike that you are there to help him in his new role. Based on your previous knowledge of the account you take the liberty of prioritizing the tasks that need to be done that will ultimately help lesson the workload in the long run.

You set up an automated Journey for the account that will track tasks and achievements that Mike and his team will need to do for these high priority milestones that you mapped out. Having this is place will help define timelines and set clear expectations for the process on both sides.

You also set up automated in-app messages as a reminder of the tasks to keep Mike and his team on track and to help them get more value from your product.

And lastly, you have scheduled out bi-weekly meetings with Mike to give him updates on his progress and help him through any roadblocks he might encounter.

It is now 6 months out from when you first started working with Mike. You have seen very good progress with the account, and things have even seemed to slow down a bit for the customer. You are grateful that you were able to rein Mike in and help keep him on track for success.

Given all that you helped Mike and his team achieve through your project management (which was mostly automated, phew!) and increased efficiency of the team by using your solution, it is a no-brainer for Mike when it comes time for renewal.

Nice work on defeating that manic churn monster!

Follow the links below to learn about the other churn monsters we’ve covered so far and stay tuned for churn monster #6 next month!

• Churn Monster #1 – Disengaged Customer
• Churn Monster #2 – Cash-Strapped Customer
• Churn Monster #3 – Slacker Customer
• Churn Monster #4 – The Victim Customer

Fight Customer Churn!

Customer Success Around the Web

• The Role of Sales in Customer Success and 6 Rules to Guide You – Whether you are in Sales or Customer Success and ideally this is done together and before anything is sold, make sure the customer knows these six things.
• Variable Compensation for Customer Success Managers – Check out these tips on how to use the lever of variable pay to your advantage.
• Customer Experience and Customer Success: What’s the Difference?  – Take a look at the definitions and where the two practices differ.