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Losing a client sucks.
You instantly lose revenue and have to rush to fill your pipeline.
However, it’s a sign of something else.
They’re not leaving for no reason.
Determining why clients churn empowers you to fix those areas and increase retention.
That means more projects, referrals, and sustained revenue over time.
So are you sick of having clients drop off?
Good. Because I’m going to teach you how to stop it ahead.
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What causes client churn?
First of all, let’s get into what causes churn to begin with.
As you could guess, there’s no shortage of things that contribute to it.
No business or customer is the same, either.
However, it’s been found that 53% of all churn happens for three reasons:
- Poor onboarding
- Weak relationship building
- Bad service including mistakes
This makes sense.
Think about it from a client’s perspective…
This data implies a churned customer wasn’t fully confident in a service provider.
They also didn’t believe a genuine relationship had been formed nor were they given special treatment.
What would you do in their shoes?
Probably not remain as a client.
That brings me to my next point.
1. How to reduce client churn
These are data-driven strategies to help you reduce client churn and increase how many satisfied customers you retain in the long term.
Improve customer service
Customer service is half of your product.
Never forget that.
In fact, 96% of consumers agree that customer service is a major factor in their loyalty to a brand.
Do you want loyal clients that continue sending you cheques for years? Then offer them a better experience.
Most companies don’t even ask if they are doing a good job – starting to gather this feedback loop is half the battle. I suggest beginning by collecting and implementing feedback. Here’s how to do with Google Forms:
Step 1: Create a new form
Click the plus button under “Start a new form.”
Alternatively, feel free to choose one of the available templates and move onto the next step.
Step 2: Customize the form
Click the plus button to add questions, multiple-choice responses, and more.
Ask questions like:
- What can we do to improve your experience?
- What’s your favorite/least favorite parts of working with us?
- How’d you find our business?
- What pain points does your company experience often?
- What solutions or products do you wish existed?
Step 3: Share it with clients
Click the “Send” button on the top right and choose one of the available sharing options.
You can directly send it to contacts, share the survey link, or embed it on a page.
Use client feedback to improve your website, marketing, advertising, and services.
2. Drive tangible results (and report on it)
What do clients want?
Results!
Sure, you might be offering consulting, web design, or social media management services.
However, what do all of those generate? Sales, brand awareness, etc. A.K.A results!
So, naturally, if they aren’t seeing a return from services they won’t be likely to continue.
I suggest clearly reporting the results you’re generating for a client because of this.
Doing so gives them an easily digestible deliverable that explains the progress you’re helping them achieve.
They can share it with other team members for feedback and it also serves as a way to start a discussion.
Clients are spending their hard-earned money on you. Be empathetic and give them reassurance and confidence in your services.
Here’s how to create a barebones client progress template with Google Sheets:
Step 1: Create necessary columns
Visit Google Drive, click the “New” button followed by “Google Sheets”.
You’ll now have a blank spreadsheet.
Create columns for the major KPIs you’re delivering to a client.
For instance, let’s imagine you str driving web traffic and conversions. It might look like this:
Create rows for two sperate reporting periods to show differences between the two.
It doesn’t have to be the Mona Lisa of spreadsheets. Keep it simple, easy to read, and most importantly: focused on results.
Step 2: Import data
Next, import the required data into the spreadsheet to fill it out.
This may require you to export data from other tools like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, etc.
Your spreadsheet should look something like this now:
If you squint hard enough you can figure out what went up or down, but let’s not give your client high blood pressure. Complete the last step.
Step 3: Use conditional formatting, functions, and styles
I recommend that you take advantage of conditional formatting to instantly highlight increases and decreases in data.
You can do this by highlighting any columns or row, clicking “Format,” and “Conditional formatting.”
For example, I can highlight cells green if they are greater than a certain number in the past period.
Alternatively, keep it basic by using a sum function at the bottom of the rows and highlighting what improved like this:
Overall, make it clear what metrics went up or down along with any key findings.
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3. Enhance targeting to bring high-quality users
You can have 10,000 users coming to your website a day.
That’s awesome. However, it’s a vanity metric.
What matters more is who you bring to the website.
It’s quality over quantity.
100 quality users will convert and engage insanely better than 1,000 low-quality users.
That brings me to my topic of improving audience targeting.
If you aren’t the best fit for clients, they will churn since it isn’t the best relationship from the start.
Heck, we’re all guilty of it. We take on work to drive sales when the pipeline is empty but it can be a huge headache later.
That’s why Morphio includes audience anomaly detection to find segments of customers who are the most profitable.
No more spending hours sifting through documents, reports, and burning cash to find buyer personas when they have generated automatically.
If you don’t mind getting your hands dirty, try this instead:
Leverage public market reports
Imagine this…
There’s a document that contains everything you need to know about an industry. I’m talking about trends, threats, consumer behavior; the works.
Well, it’s called a market report and many of them are free, too.
Head over to Google and search for:
- Industry keyword + market report
- Industry keyword + industry report
- Industry keyword + consumer report
This will give you no shortage of secondary data to work with.
Pay special attention to any information regarding consumer:
- Demographics
- Psychographics
- Surveys
- Studies
- Etc.
Peek under the hood
Whether you use Google Analytics, Hotjar, or another platform, you’re most likely collecting customer data already.
That’s why the best source of information is often right under your nose.
Let’s use Google Analytics, for instance.
Navigate over to the “Audience,” “Geo,” and “Location” tabs.
Here you will find the countries and cities that the website traffic originates from.
This information is used to target specific areas that are generating the highest conversions and engagement.
Similarly, the demographics overview page displays a cohort of age and gender.
All of this should be used to refine targeting within marketing and advertising campaigns.
4. Personalize the client’s experience
Let me ask you something.
Have you ever received an advertisement for something that had nothing to do with you?
You probably felt annoyed and that it wasted your time, huh?
That’s because it lacked personalization.
It wasn’t meant for you.
It was made for hundreds of thousands of people.
Unfortunately, a shotgun approach like that reduces sincerity and impact.
That is precisely marketers who create personalized experiences generate 20% more sales.
Here’s how to do it yourself:
Address them personally
Using someone’s name is extremely powerful.
It’s who they are. It’s their identity.
It’s no wonder that subject lines including the first name of the recipient greatly increase the click-through rate.
Personalize the client’s experience by integrating their personal information into messages as much as possible.
This can be collected through contact forms, landing pages, and opt-ins.
Then, use it in emails, dashboards, and everywhere else to make their experience feel like it was made specifically for them.
Create triggers based on behavior
The devil is in the details.
Not only can you personally address people by their information, but their behavior, too.
Let’s use the customer experience company Zendesk as an illustration.
If I visit their pricing page, I’m greeted by a pop-up offer for a free demo. Don’t mind if I do!
However, if I navigate to their services page, I’m given a “Contact Sales” prompt.
Why is this?
Mainly because each page attracts a different user and the experience needs to align with that.
If a customer is checking out the pricing, seeing a live demo could be what pushes them over the edge to convert.
Similarly, someone viewing services may wish to speak to a sales rep to learn more.
Triggers can be made for:
- Visiting certain pages.
- Spending a specific amount of time on a page.
- Scroll percentage.
- Interacting with buttons or other elements.
- Filling out forms.
All of these should display a unique call to action and offer.
Final thoughts on reducing client churn
There’s nothing worse than losing a high-paying client.
It could be a big chunk of revenue and you have to scramble to find another to fill the gap.
But, what if you could reduce churn and increase retention?
That would keep revenue steady and give you peace of mind.
While you could put in the elbow grease and follow every step I laid out for you today, there’s a way to achieve all of them at once.
Try Morphio today for free. Our marketing security platform will discover your company’s most profitable audiences, track client progress, and give you easy-to-share reports.
