Out of all the things that can decrease the number of sales a business makes, customer churn is the biggest issue many companies struggle with. Your churn rate is a very important metric and it is something that determines the overall performance of your company.
Reducing churn by just 5% can increase profits by as much as 25-125%. Naturally, everyone wants to have low churn rates and high sales figures, but that’s hard to accomplish sometimes. There are situations where you will see less than ideal metrics and won’t know what kind of issue needs to be fixed.
However, there are some ways that are guaranteed to fix these issues and bring your business to a new level.
Use an ETL software
There are many reasons for customer churn, but a very small number of companies consider the improper use of big data to be an issue that can cause customer churn.
All companies deal with data, and the more customers you have, the more data you need to keep track of. The old-fashioned way of processing data which includes writing codes manually is much slower and leaves a lot of room for human error. That’s why a lot of businesses have decided to automate this process.
You can use ETL software to manage your data more efficiently and reduce customer churn. The software is easy to use and presents you with the visual flow of your system’s logic that in the end allows you to visualize the data much better than through manual data processing.
ETL is short for extract, transform, and load, which represents the three stages this software uses:
- Extraction. In the first stage, the software retrieves all of the data from one or multiple sources. This data can be in different forms as well.
- Transformation. Before the data can reach the final stage, it needs to be transformed from the source to the target. Here, all the extracted data will be converted into the same dimension which uses the same units.
- Loading. The final step is where all of the collected data is joined together and placed into one database, where it will be easily accessible.
Increase customer engagement
It’s very important to think about ways you can keep up in this competitive world. After all, while your business is very important to you, it isn’t as important to your customers who have a whole world of businesses to choose from. That’s why you need to make your business stand out.
Customer churn often happens because people aren’t invested enough with the company. To fix this problem, you need to find a way to engage the customers who may feel like they aren’t getting enough value from your business.
Companies that successfully engage their B2B customers have 63% lower customer attrition, so if you find a way to engage your customers, you can be sure there won’t be any downsides. Not only will you reduce churn rates, but you will also increase customer satisfaction and retention.
Plan and implement engagement strategies that are specifically tailored to your business and those that will appeal to your customers.
Some great examples of customer engagement channels include:
- Social media accounts on various platforms
- A blog where you can post insightful and helpful articles
- Newsletters
- Webinars and Q&A sessions
Reduce involuntary churn
The worst type of churn is probably involuntary churn. As its name suggests, involuntary churn happens passively and not because the customers stopped their payments voluntarily. Most of the time, it occurs because a customer forgets to update their payment information.
Involuntary churn can happen to any business and it’s hard to know where it will come from, so it’s important to always keep an eye out for it. There are many different reasons for involuntary churn, some of which are:
- An expired credit card
- A maxed-out credit card
- Credit card fraud
- Outdated billing information
While this is a pressing issue, some businesses aren’t even aware of how big of a problem they have with involuntary churn before it’s too late. If you’ve never given too much thought to it, now it’s time you start reducing your involuntary churn because there is a high chance your company sees a lot of it.
The first step to reducing involuntary churn is calculating exactly how much money you’re losing. You can do that with this payment recovery ROI calculator, which will tell you exactly how much revenue you can recover.
You can use this number as a motivation to finally take involuntary churn seriously and apply strategies that will reduce involuntary churn and increase profits. Even simple tactics such as sending personalized emails or building a failed payment recovery process can make a big difference in the long run.
Be proactive, be a leader
When it comes to increasing sales, there is one thing a lot of business owners need to learn – making a profit and increasing sales depends on how good you are at running your company. A good business owner needs to know how to be proactive, and even more importantly, how to be a leader.
Proactivity
Show your customers you’re invested in building a relationship with them and helping them with any issues that could arise by being proactive and reaching out to them before they reach out to you.
The reach out needs to be well-timed and relate either to your products or the customer’s journey. With a proactive approach, you can take customer service from good to great. Observe the behavior your customers exhibit and find the specific points during which you can contact them.
The type of communication channel you use depends on the message you want to send, but there are some channels that are great for proactive communication such as a live chat and chatbot, or email and telephone.
Leadership
Anyone can start a business, but very few people have what it takes to be a leader in their own company. There are certain leadership factors that are necessary if you want to be a successful salesperson.
- Character. You won’t be able to make a sale unless you manage to create a strong level of trust with your customers, and you can’t do this without character. This includes both honesty and integrity because those are the fundamentals of trust.
- Competence. Professional competence shows that you are worthy of their business, and you can prove it in many ways. Work hard to prove you’re an expert in your field, understand your customers, and even your competition, so you know who you need to beat to show your competence.
- Compassion. Show your customers that you care about them as people, not just as someone who is paying for your goods or services. Compassion is powerful and helps show the human side of your business.
- Communication. It’s important to remember that communication is a two-way street. A skilled salesperson isn’t only good at explaining information to their customer, but also listening to all of their queries and providing answers.
- Collaboration. All good leaders know that to make a sale, you need to know how to collaborate. You and your customers aren’t enemies, you’re a team looking for the same solution. And with the right pitch, your product will be the solution they’ve been looking for.
Of course, most people aren’t natural-born leaders, as it’s a skill that needs to be learned. If you want to learn leadership skills that will help you increase sales, you need executive leadership coaching. Once you master leadership skills, you will be able to take your business to a whole new level.
Final thoughts
Customer churn is something that can greatly decrease your profit, but that doesn’t mean you should give up and accept failure. All you need to do is apply strategies that will help you reduce customer churn and increase sales, and your business will start booming more than ever before.
