Do this one thing right now to reduce churn
Churn is the bane of every SaaS business, and it’s becoming more of a challenge than ever. According to a recent survey from TechCrunch, more than half of the businesses they surveyed had a lower retention rate in 2022 than they did in 2021.
Increased rates of churn can lead to panic, blame, and bad decisions. And the risks of a high churn rate are very real. Business leader Asaf Darash notes, “A high churn rate could signal many things are going wrong within your business…it could also alert potential customers that your business is sinking, leading to a negative brand reputation.”
Churn rate is bad. But is it solvable?
The answer is yes.
There are many ways to improve your business operations to achieve lower churn rates, which is great news. But here’s the real kicker – there’s an easy fix you can implement right now to see in an instant drop in churn rates.
And that one thing is…
Invite your customers to customer education events or certification courses.
It’s so simple, but the effect is so profound.
For the past year, Kat Breeggemann, Salesloft’s Customer Success Program Manager, and her team have been tracking churn and upsell rates of customers who attend live customer education events — like Office Hours, Fast Start Trainings, and webinars — and customers who attend certification courses. The data is clear — when customers attend these events, only 1.4% of them churn, which is well below the standard industry benchmark of a 5-7% churn rate. Kat says, “If customers attend literally 1 customer education event in the 6 months leading up to their renewal rate, we see they’re significantly more likely to renew — and upgrade!”
There’s one really important rule on how to create a successful customer education event: you should aim to meet your customers where they are in their learning journey. Our customers are largely sellers, and they’re busy. They don’t have a lot of time. Therefore, all of the educational events need to be as accessible as possible. The Customer Education team, in partnership with the Customer Success and the Consulting Services teams, offer 70 live events for customers in multiple different formats. These range from live Q&A sessions, to webinars, to roundtable discussions on both technical and strategic topics. Everyone learns differently, so the teams build something for everyone.
And the customers really appreciate it. One customer says, “This is an incredible solution to scale customer support/services. I love that you all are just doing the right thing by providing this service at no extra cost. Really customer centric.”
Kat notes, “Educated customers are better equipped to use our product. They know how to use Salesloft to achieve their goals, empowering them to work smarter, not harder; they understand the value our product provides. And that’s why customer education inspires them to not just stick with us, but to buy more.”
There you have it. Sometimes the solution to a really big business problem is just that simple.
Learn more about how our customer education teams use Salesloft to set customers up for success.