Five Ways to Eliminate Customer Churn

This article answers the question: How can companies reduce churn and keep customers coming back?

Answer: Companies can reduce customer churn by identifying and eliminating inconsistent experiences, recognizing that churn often builds over time, measuring churn as closely as sales and revenue, and consistently delivering the level of experience customers have learned to expect from you.

Earlier this year, I wrote about the idea that we should have a one-word description to define the problem we solve for our customers. I used my keynote speaking and consulting business around customer experience as an example. The one-word problem I solve for my clients is churn. 

Ever since I wrote that article, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the reason behind churn. Why does it happen, and how can we reduce or eliminate churn? Here are five ways to lower churn and get customers to return:   

1. Churn is the problem, not customer service or CX: It turns out customer service and experience are solutions to the problem, not the actual problem. Some of you will say, “Bad customer service is the problem.” No, that’s the symptom. Fix that, and you eliminate the real problem: churn. 

2. Churn is caused by inconsistent experiences: A bad customer experience is most often the result of inconsistent experiences. Nobody ever sets out to purposely create a bad experience. Most likely they try to do right by the customer every time. But then there are failures. A phone call isn’t returned. Multiple transfers to different sales and support people frustrate the customer. One employee is nice, but the next one isn’t. These inconsistencies are the problem. Once again, the solution is customer experience. 

3. Recognize that churn happens before the customer leaves: It’s often not one incident, unless it’s a big one, that causes customers to leave. For the reasons already mentioned, the accumulation of several experiences that don’t consistently meet customers’ expectations is what drives customers away.  

4. Measuring churn is just as important as measuring sales and revenue: Knowing the percentage of lost customers is the only way to know if your efforts to fix it are working. You can’t say, “I think we lost fewer customers this month than last month.” You must be able to assign a number and say, “Our customer experience effort is working. Our customer churn is down 5%.” 

5. Your best experience sets the standard: Once you deliver a great experience, you’ve shown the customer what you’re capable of, and that becomes the standard they expect next time. That’s why inconsistency hurts. Customers don’t care which employee, department, or location they are dealing with. To them, it’s all the same company. What customers do compare is their next experience with you to their last one.  

With those five ideas in mind, I want you to sit down with your team, and instead of asking, “How can we improve our customer experience?” ask, “What inconsistent experiences are causing customers to leave?” Knowing the answer to that question is what will get more of your customers to say, “I’ll be back!”

Shep Hyken is a customer service/CX expert, award-winning keynote speaker, and New York Times bestselling author. Learn more about Shep’s customer service and customer experience keynote speeches and his customer service training workshops at www.Hyken.com. Connect with Shep on LinkedIn.