Reduce Customer Churn: How to Stop Churn with Pipedrive Automation

It’s no secret that many businesses are losing sales opportunities because of one recurring problem – customer churn. While churn is a natural order of doing business, if it’s not addressed early on and often, your business risks missing out on the revenue generated by returning customers. 

In fact, it’s estimated that the average company loses 10-25% of its customers every year. Another survey shows that 39% of consumers have switched brands or retailers since the pandemic. But in reality, most customers don’t churn because they don’t like your business or its products; they churn because you didn’t give them a reason to stay. 

In this guide, we will explain why a rock-solid customer churn reduction strategy is essential to the longevity of virtually every company on the planet. We’ll introduce you to Pipedrive automation and show you how this incredible sales CRM can help you reduce churn rate through effective processes, streamlined workflows, and other brilliant features.

What is Customer Churn?

Customer churn is the rate customers leave your business within a specified period. It is when a customer leaves your business, either because they defect to the competition or stop purchasing from you altogether. Most of the time, this happens as a result of customer dissatisfaction.

Churning can directly impact a company’s bottom line. Lost customers translate to 

• plummeting profitability, 
• increasing expenses of new customer acquisition, 
• and reputational damage altogether. 

As such, the significance of identifying why customers leave and taking corrective action to reduce churn cannot be overstated. 

A declining number of customers indicates that something needs to change in your business practices and offering; there may be an opportunity for improvement. 

Here’s a brief illustration of the top 6 reasons why customers leave the average business and switch to the next best alternative:

• Poor service/product quality
• To get lower prices
• Lack of customised solution
• Bureaucracy in company policies
• Technologies that delay/stop service
• Service rep lacking knowledge about the product/service.

Top Reason Consumers Switch Service Providers Source: Customer Service Manager

Why is Knowing Your Churn Rate Important?

• For one thing, it gives you a critical insight into the health of your business. If you have a high churn rate, it means that your customers aren’t happy or aren’t getting what they need from your product. This can help you better understand where your business needs to improve so that you can retain your customers.

• Digging into your business’s churn rate also helps you identify which customers are leaving and why. By taking a closer look at your churned customers, you can determine where you’re falling short and how to improve your product to keep the rest of your customers happy.

If your churn rate is high, it may be worth investing more money and effort into retention campaigns, services, and products that can help keep your customers from leaving.

What Churn Rate is Acceptable?

Although there isn’t a standard churn rate that all businesses can expect, a churn rate of 5% – 7% annually is acceptable. This translates to 0.42 – 0.58% monthly churn. Software companies have one of the highest average churn rates of any industry.  

Here are the churn rates by industry according to Statista:

Churn rates by industry: Source: Statista Report 2020

Stages of Sales Process When Customer Churn Occurs

Keeping customers happy and engaged is extremely important to businesses. But things don’t always go according to plan; churn can occur at any stage of the sales process for a returning customer.

What you need to worry about, however, is the risk of churn after purchase. Churning may occur in these pipeline stages as well:

• Prospecting – Customers may lose interest in your product or service at the first stage of the sales process. They may begin turning away if they’re not the right fit for your solutions, products, and services.

• Negotiation –  Negotiations in the sales process help solve problems, address product & service concerns and find common ground with the customer. And that includes the product or service pricing. By the way, 46% of customers switch services for lower prices.

• Nurturing – The nurturing stage increases the customer’s trust in your products and services. This involves providing the right information about the product/service. However, a staggering 39% of customers switch services when the service representative lacks sufficient knowledge about the provider’s services. 

• Follow-up and customer service – If customers don’t feel they are being helped or served properly, they’ll simply walk away and shop elsewhere. Remember, 32% of customers end business with a brand they love after one bad experience.

10 Ways to Reduce Customer Churn Rate

Most companies attempt to reduce churn by making rigorous investments in training employees on how they can improve their service and experience. Others develop new, exciting products and services, and launch loyalty programs, promos, and discounts to keep customers coming back for more. But is that enough?

Unfortunately, no. Here’s how to reduce customer churn:

1. Streamline the onboarding process

The onboarding process is the first impression users have of your product, so it needs to be top-notch. Here, you have a short period to get users excited about your product and see its benefits. It must also be timely and frictionless – 89% of clients undergo a frustrating onboarding process. 

And in that time, 13% switched to a competitor. You can smoothen a few edges in the onboarding process with Pipedrive workflow automation. Pipedrive is a sales CRM that allows you to set up automated workflows based on certain actions and events. For instance, you can set up an automation that sends a welcome email to every new customer.

The system can also assign the new client to a sales representative immediately after they’ve been qualified and accepted into your sales pipeline. You can set up additional rules to determine when an event should trigger one or more activities. 

2. Make customer retention a priority from day one

You must prioritise churn from day one of your interaction with the client to reduce churn. Customer engagement and retention are often an afterthought that businesses only really consider when the sales numbers don’t add up, and they’re struggling to make ends meet. 

But retention should be a part of any business’s DNA and a regular part of your day-to-day thought processes. If you prioritise retention from the get-go, you’ll be in a better position to reduce churn when it becomes an issue. That said, here’s how to reduce customer churn:

• Find out what customers want, what they value, and what they need. 
• Make retention a key priority, just like any other marketing goal.
• Assign relevant KPIs and start tracking the performance.
• Monitor the results and adjust your strategy where needed.
• Automate the repetitive processes.  

You’ll thank yourself once you start seeing results.

3. Don’t over-rely on customer feedback as the only indicator of churn risk

Customer feedback is incredibly important, but customers can be fickle about it. While you want to encourage customer feedback and use it to improve your products and services, you shouldn’t rely on it as the only indicator of churn risk. 

Customers can be imprecise, inconsistent, or just plain wrong about their desires and needs. If a customer asks for something but then churns with no obvious reason, customer feedback won’t tell you why. Feedback is still important, but you should use it to inform decisions and drive improvement rather than make deductions based solely on it. 

It’s better to rely on data-driven approaches to managing churn risk. 

• Get data from your customer support team. 
• Use customer lifetime value (CLV) to understand which customers are worth keeping and which will likely churn soon. 
• Regularly review reports and use cohort customer churn analysis to identify trends in your customer base and spot at-risk customers before they churn.

4. Don’t be afraid to continuously tweak your product based on churn data

Retrospectives and continuous improvement are two of the most important business aspects. There’re also two areas many startups fail to take seriously until something goes wrong. Successful startups always look back on their processes, analyse data, and make improvements based on those findings. 

When you have sufficient customer churn analysis data to support your changes, it’s best to go with it. Use past churn data to support the changes you’re making. If it shows you that a certain subset of customers is at risk of churning because they’re not getting what they signed up for with your product, don’t be afraid to tweak your product or service.

5. Be transparent with customers about the value you’re providing to them

Customers want to know that they’re getting a good deal from you. While many customers don’t know how much a product is worth to them, there are plenty who do. For those that don’t, it’s best to make known what value they’re getting from your product or service.

Showing that you understand their unique needs is very important, according to some 65% of global customers. Be transparent about your prices, your value proposition, and the value customers get from your product. Don’t be shy about touting your strengths; customers want to know what they’re getting from their purchase.

This way, they’ll have something to reference when deciding to stick around.

6. Offer custom options for customers who want to pay more or less

Another great way to reduce churn is to give customers custom product/service options. Some will only want the bare-bones product/service, while others will be willing to pay more for additional benefits. 

If you offer customers the option to pay more for added value, you create a sense of commitment and loyalty from the customers who truly value the product. You also create an option for customers who want to pay less to use specific features. This will help reduce churn by giving customers more control over their purchases.

7. Give your customers a reason to stick around

Customers will always churn, but you can make it less frequent by giving them a reason to stay. In addition to improving your product and making it worthwhile, give your customers a reason to stick with you. 

• A top-quality product or service is one valuable reason you can give to your customers to keep them coming back.
• Great customer service can bring your customers back.
• Develop an engagement programme to consistently give them exclusive deals or discounts that they won’t find anywhere else.

Give your customers something that they can’t get anywhere else. Find ways to create value that benefits your customers and your business. Give customers a reason to stay with you, and they’ll be less likely to churn.

8. Don’t be afraid to lose customers that don’t fit your solutions

You can’t make every customer stay and shouldn’t try to. If you have customers who are not a good fit for your business and they’re not getting any value from your product, they will churn eventually. Instead, focus on reducing the number of customers in this category. Segment your customers and assign them a score based on selected criteria.

If a customer is not getting value from your product or service, there’s nothing wrong with letting them go. This will free up resources, time, and sales support for more qualified, sales-ready customers.

9. Ask churned customers why they left

Not all churn is avoidable, but most of it is. If a customer churns, they’ll usually give you a reason, but only if you ask nicely (and don’t forget to ask, or better – automate this process to get consistent feedback). This presents a golden opportunity to learn from the experience. You can use this information to improve your product and help keep other customers from churn.

Pipedrive’s built-in communication tools allow you to monitor your customers and ask for feedback. With dozens of email templates, you can create a follow-up message once to collect feedback any time a client leaves your business. This way, you can learn from your mistakes and improve as a company. You can save other customers from experiencing the same problems as the customers who just left. 

10. Educate your customers on your products

Asking customers why they churned is great, but it’s even better if you can educate them about how to use your product to solve their problems. This means creating articles, blogs, and product manuals and hosting webinars. Try to educate your customers on why they need your product or service. 

There you have it. If you’re unsure how to reduce customer churn, contact our automation professionals today! 

How Automaly Growth Experts Can Help You Reduce Churn with Pipedrive Automation

Not sure how to reduce customer churn with Pipedrive? Don’t panic. We’re here to help! Automaly is an automation and AI consultancy enabling businesses like yours set up the right Pipedrive integrations. We analyze your current Pipedrive setup and recommend the right integrations to meet your business needs. 

What’s more, we help you nurture your prospects into sales with the right automation tools from the Pipedrive marketplace. Our team provides all the training and support your team needs to use Pipedrive.

So, what are you waiting for? Book a free Process Power-Up today!

Conclusion

All businesses have churn, but that doesn’t mean that you have to accept it as given. With the right strategies and a focus on retention, you can reduce churn and increase customer satisfaction, bringing in more revenue and growing your business.