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How to Reduce Customer Churn Rate: 11 Solid Strategies

Customer Churn

7 min read

Updated :
January 13, 2022

Published : December 9, 2021

How to Reduce Customer Churn Rate: 11 Solid Strategies

Kevin McReady

SEO Specialist

Kevin is the SEO Specialist at Acquire. When not optimizing websites and building creations of his own, he enjoys video games, sports, and cooking.

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If you want your customers to stick around, it’s important you understand how to reduce customer churn rate.

Of course, some level of churn is inevitable — no matter how much effort you put into satisfying your customers. There are reasons customers stop doing business with you that are simply beyond your control.

So, if your business wants to:

Retain existing customers
Increase profits and revenue
Scale and grow
Create loyal customers

You'll need to learn how to reduce customer churn rate.

Let's dive in.

What is customer churn rate?

Customer churn rate is defined as the rate at which customers stop doing business with a company or brand. The higher your churn rate, the more customers you lose. A lower churn rate means more customers you keep on your books.

Customer churn rate illustration — Illustration showing churned customers.

Your churn rate is the opposite of customer retention rate. It's always looked at as the remainder, so if you have a customer retention rate of 75%, then your churn is 25%.

How to calculate churn rate

To calculate your churn rate, you’ll need to divide the number of lost customers by the total number of customers you had at the start of that period of time. Then multiple it by 100 to create a percentage.

Churn rate formula

Churn Rate = (Number of customers lost / Total number of customers at start of time frame) x 100

For example, if you have 1,000 customers and lose 250 of those customers across the course of a month, then your customer churn rate will be 25% for that month.

What causes customer churn?

Because every company is different, the factors that lead to customer churn vary by industry. But the leading causes tend to stay the same:

Poor onboarding process
Weak customer relationships or communication
Terrible or lack of customer service
Difficult user experience with the product
Completely ignoring complaints and feedback

Leading causes of customer churn graph — The leading causes of customer churn graph by zonkafeedback.com

So, what does it take to reduce your churn rate and create more repeat customers?

Here are a set of customer churn strategies to do just that.

1. Analyze why churn is happening

Before tackling a problem, you need to identify the cause. That means gathering customer feedback and measuring what is going on.

Whenever you detect churn in your business, use these methods to find out why.

Call the customer (if possible)
Send a customer exit survey (if not)

Talking to your customers over the phone isn’t just a great way to show that you care, it’s your best shot at getting the depth of information around their reasons for churning that can make a real difference. It also gives you the chance to ask follow up questions, probe deeper, and clarify things if needed.

Surveys can be a useful tactic if customers don’t want to speak on the phone or if it’s simply impractical to do so. Just bear in mind not to ask too many questions. One or two that really get to the heart of the matter is just fine.

When you use surveys, send them via email, or let customers complete them on your site. For ultimate convenience, you could even distribute the survey to mobile devices via app or SMS.

2. Use cobrowsing for personalized customer service

Quality customer service is one of the most effective ways to reduce customer churn rate. So, adding a personal touch to your customer service with a tool like cobrowsing can really help in maintaining a solid customer base.

Cobrowsing is so powerful because it brings your customer and agent together on the same page — literally — providing a visual reference point around which to interact.

This helps to cut down time spent on explaining. That means less chance of customers getting frustrated trying to understand the solutions to issues being explained over the phone. Agents can demonstrate visually what customers need to do and guide them through it instead.

3. Improve the user onboarding process

If you’re a SaaS company, take note: after signing up for a free SaaS application trial, 40 - 60 percent of users will use it once, and then never return.

One of the reasons is that users can’t see the value it adds to their life or business. It just goes to show how important a watertight onboarding process is in your customer success efforts.

So, improving your onboarding process and communicating clearly with your users as they pass through the funnel is vital if you want to mitigate against this problem. Once customers understand how to get the most out of your product or service, they’re far more likely to stick around.

Want to learn how to achieve customer success? Check our our on demand webinar. https://acquire.io/webinars-events/customer-success-teams/

4. Provide proactive customer service

Sometimes customers leave your website because they struggle to navigate it properly or find the product information they’re after. In fact, customers may get so frustrated they stop doing business with you all together.

To help you address this, have your customer support team take a proactive approach. That means engaging customers at certain points in their journey — often using live chat — based on the behavior they exhibit. This way, customers get immediate solutions, reducing your churn rate, and creating a better overall customer experience.

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5. Make yourself indispensable

Think of a way of integrating your offering into people’s lives that makes you indispensable. Then it’s extremely difficult for them to switch to your competitors or cancel their accounts.

For example, Zapier provides a 14-day free trial plan to allow users to test their service before purchasing a pro plan. During this trial period, you (the user) will be given all the support a premium customer would, and be allowed to use all of the best features of their service in all plans.

At the end of the 14 days trial, you’re already so embedded with the software that it’s difficult to go back.

6. Create a community around your product

People like to feel like part of a community. The desire to belong is ingrained in our very nature. So, one way of reducing customer churn rate is to make your customers feel like they're part of your brand.

Moz runs a guest post-driven blog, to which any member of the community is welcome to submit a guest. Their questions and answers discussion board is also very active and usually very educational.

Using online communities in this way helps educate and engage users, always keeping the brand front of mind.

7. Remind customers of the value you provide

Sometimes existing customers lose sight of the worth of your product or service as the initial novelty wears off. That is, unless you explicitly communicate it to them.

Collect metrics and data that pay testament to the impact your service is having on their life or business — how it’s helping drive revenue, or saving them time. Then keep them updated with this data and share the progress being made.

8. Increase customer engagement

Customers are constantly being bombarded from every angle by different options and information. Remember, your company isn’t the only one that can fulfill their needs. If they feel they are not getting the most value out of their relationship with you, they can — and will — change to your competitors.

With the proper strategy in place, focusing on customer satisfaction and retention rates, you can increase customer engagement and nurture long-term relationships. This can involve regular communication through product-led content, blogs, newsletter, videos and so on, reinforcing what they can get out of your product or service. You could also arrange webinars or Q&As, or even share information on social media platforms.

9. Offer dedicated account managers

Depending on the type of company you are, having someone dedicated to dealing with a particular customer can be a powerful way to retain them. When customers feel they have a personal relationship with someone in the company, that connection increases the likelihood of them staying.

Of course, this isn’t always possible. To make up for this, you can take an omnichannel approach that provides your agents with information and context about customers and creates a conversational experience. That way, they can feel they have a personal relationship with your company as a whole instead.

Leverage this type of approach to improve your customer retention strategy, and up your customer retention rate (CRR) and customer lifetime value (CLV).

10. Surprise and delight your customers

Little gifts ‘just because’, some customer recognition through a digital certificate perhaps — anything that helps puts a smile on your customer’s face can really help reduce customer churn rate.

A Reddit user who received a handwritten thank you message from a company they’re subscribed to (as a customer). They logged onto their Reddit account to share their testimony and enthusiasm.

hand written customer thank you note — A simple thank you note can go a long way

The likelihood is, not only have they kept that customer, but they’ve attracted a few more to their business as well.

11. Provide additional services

Additional services, above and beyond your core business offering, can make a big difference when it comes to giving your customers reasons to stay. Think how you can provide services that enable them to scale their business or improve their lives.

Improve the customer experience to reduce churn

All of this comes down to creating a great customer experience — it’s the surest way to reduce customer churn rate.

Treat your customers well and they’re much more likely to stick around. They may even become advocates, referring other customers to you and helping your business grow.

Which of these customer churn strategies are you going to implement? Are there any missing strategies you know that work?

Let us know in the comments.

Add Comment

One thought on “How to Reduce Customer Churn Rate: 11 Solid Strategies”

Travis says:
November 15, 2021 at 4:22 pm
Thank you for the article covering the topic of customer churn rate and its influence on customer retention.
I agree with the statement that :” If your customer churn rate is higher than your new customer acquisition rate, your business will struggle.”
Reply

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How to Reduce Customer Churn Rate: 11 Solid Strategies

Customer Churn

7 min read

Updated : January 13, 2022

Published : December 9, 2021

Kevin McReady

SEO Specialist

Our top reads

Share this article

Join 50,000 CX enthusiasts and counting

What is customer churn rate?

How to calculate churn rate

Churn rate formula

What causes customer churn?

How to reduce customer churn rate

1. Analyze why churn is happening

2. Use cobrowsing for personalized customer service

3. Improve the user onboarding process

4. Provide proactive customer service

The Ultimate Guide to Customer Support

5. Make yourself indispensable

6. Create a community around your product

7. Remind customers of the value you provide

8. Increase customer engagement

9. Offer dedicated account managers

10. Surprise and delight your customers

11. Provide additional services

Improve the customer experience to reduce churn

Add Comment

One thought on “How to Reduce Customer Churn Rate: 11 Solid Strategies”

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Browse related blogs

Customer Churn

Customer Churn

Customer Churn

Customer Churn

How to Reduce Customer Churn Rate: 11 Solid Strategies

Updated :
January 13, 2022