5 steps to save your at-risk customers
A CS strategy from identification to prevention
DEAR STAGE 2: Curious if you have access to any good documentation on developing plans for taking red/yellow accounts to green. Almost like a mutual action plan for existing customers. Any ideas? ~CEO Leading CS
DEAR CEO LEADING CS: I received this question a few weeks ago and surprisingly didn’t have a strong “off the shelf” framework to lean back on. Here’s what I replied at the time:
What I usually advise companies to do is to start with their Leading Indicators of Retention and work backwards - what are all of the possible things we could do to get a company activated, adopting and seeing value? Then prioritize that list for onboarding. From there you can return to it, almost like a menu of options, for current customers who are not engaged to build a short term "save" plan and get them back to green. The real issue in my mind is evaluating how much time to spend on this - there are some customers (non-ICP) where it is likely better to let them churn and focus for your CS time on accounts who are ideal and can grow with you.
But it got my wheels spinning and I wanted to share a more thorough answer on how to really approach this. I had a call lined up with Steve Kennedy, VP of CS at SumoLogic, the same week and decided to put him on the spot, and boy did he deliver! Read on to learn the 5 step process that Steve uses:
1. Detection & Identification
Source of risk: Steve outlined the most common causes of friction and discontent at various stages of the customer journey. Pull from these as you inspect your own customer base:
Early Stage: onboarding (speed/expectation misalignment), transition from pre to post sales, and transition from hunter (AE) to farmer (AM) rep. Ask yourself: Is there a journey/plan that aligns with business and technical objectives? Is it time-bound? Is the customer bought in and committed? Do we have communication strategy and cadence?
Steve points out “As a buyer, you put a lot of political capital out there to purchase a product. You spend the company money like it’s your own and you want to see the ROI come through. You’ve probably made some promises internally and need to deliver. The last thing you want is to get stuck in a situation of ‘you promised X and I don’t see it’”
Mid-Relationship: relationship (AM transitions or Champion leaves), support (volume of issues, response time, completeness of resolution), training, and/or missed expectations – almost always comes down to communication and persistence of relationship!
Yes, this is work, but personal relationships really do matter. Steve notes “If you are trying to protect NRR/GRR you need relationship cohesion. A persistent technical or support contact can bridge the gap if an AE or CSM leaves the team”
End-of-Relationship Risks: If you hear these categories of concerns, you likely failed to see signals in the first two buckets and have significant work to do to resell the customer: customer expresses concerns about ROI/value, wants to rerun a POC/POV, or is flagging competitive threats.
So much of this comes back to how you communicate with decision makers. Steve points out that the decision maker and budget holder are often different people than the team who owns implementation or even day to day use of the product. To maintain alignment and accelerate adoption, Steve recommends sending a weekly update email during implementation that includes an exec summary, status update on what was accomplished this week, next steps and any challenges. This note should go to everyone on the customer team from lowest level analyst all the way to highest level economic buyer. Why does this work? The implementers generally don’t have exposure to c-suite, so it can give them limelight all the way up the chain AND gives c-suite immediate feedback on the investment decision. And imagine, if things go a little sideways or the customer misses a deadline, the c-suite sees that and puts the pressure on internally
Set up a system for early warning signals: Steve advises that “proactive is always better than reactive. If the customer is coming to you, you've missed something along the way. You need to know they are trending out of green; if they are already red, it's going to be a lift.” But how to do that? Certainly depends on the company, but there are a combination of inputs you can look to build CS Heuristic:
Data analytics: product/usage data, CRM (last convo, current contacts), support tickets, etc…
Feedback Mechanisms: CSAT, NPS, communication cadence/meetings
Account Monitoring: qualitative health/sentiment
2. Analysis and Planning
Identify the root cause: before you can address the problem, you need to understand the reason for the dissatisfaction/risk status. Refer to step 1 above and figure out what is impacting this unique customer.
Stakeholder engagement: Don’t make assumptions! Steve points out that “It's critical to engage with key stakeholders within the customer’s organization to gather insights, validate findings, and discuss concerns. This isn't just the economic buyer, or the technical buyer. Top to bottom. More often than not a key relationship at any given level, including the operator/systems person who uses the product will render key insights you need to address the issue.”
Build the action plan: Develop a tailored action plan that addresses the *specific* issues identified. This plan should include clear objectives, set defined timelines, and define responsibilities. Steve lays out a few sample ideas to get your started on acting on
Onboarding and Education: For early-stage issues, enhance onboarding processes, provide additional training, and ensure the customer fully understands the product’s value.
Steve recommends auditing the knowledge transfer at each handoff point to ensure customers feel heard and do not have to repeat themselves. You can build a form and figure out what info needs to be transferred to avoid the dreaded “so tell me what you bought”, “what are your goals”, etc…”
Continuous Support and Engagement: For mid-stream challenges, offer dedicated support, regular check-ins, and proactive advice to ensure the customer achieves their desired outcomes.
Value Reinforcement: For customers at risk of churn, focus on reinforcing the value proposition, exploring additional use cases, and potentially renegotiating terms to meet their needs better.
3. Execution (of the Get to Green Plan!)
This is where you make it happen! You have to live and breathe the plan that you have defined and create accountability throughout your organization (and the customers!) to deliver.
4. Monitoring & Adjustment
Once the plan is in motion, you need to reflect on what is/isn’t working and how you are tracking relative to the goals you laid out. Steve recommends 3 inputs:
Progress Tracking: monitor the customer health score and progression towards green. Adjust the plan as needed if you are not seeing any improvement.
Feedback Loops: maintain a regular cadence of customer communications to ensure you remain aligned. This communication plan is often multi-threaded and requires touchpoints from various team members on your end to cover all stakeholders at the customer.
Documentation and Learning: document your process and the outcomes. When something works, you can codify that learning to develop playbooks for the rest of the team. And consider how a customer got to “red” - these insights can also help to refine your early warning signals and preventative motions.
5. Prevention and Proactive Engagement
There’s a lot you can, and should, be doing proactively to avoid letting a customer slip into the yellow/red category. At Stage 2, we recommend defining and tracking a Leading Indicator of Retention as the starting point and Steve shared a few other ideas:
Invest in customer education, community building, and story-based success planning to foster a positive, long-term relationship with each customer.
Have a persistent and systematic communication and engagement motion so things are not left to human triggers (this doesn't mean generic low value coms and interactions!)
Go save some accounts!
Until next week!