It can be really tough to think through the short-term pressures of churn.  SMBs are hurting the most, and the churn will be highest there.  Enterprises are churning less, but slowing new purchases way down.

Just remember one thing as your North Star here:  No Customer Wants to Leave a Vendor They Count On.

You may have 1000s or more customers.  But often, your key stakeholders only manage a few key, core applications they need.  And that the organization looks up to them to deliver with:

  • No one wants to lose their CRM.
  • No one wants to cancel their call center.
  • No one wants to lose their core ERP, what they run their business on.
  • No one that has spent the past 2 years deploying a new solution wants to rip it out.  Not unless it was a failure.

Etc. etc.

If your NPS is high and your utility is real, your customers will want to stay.  Help them do that.  You’ll be surprised how many are not just rooting for you, but will do their darnedest not to churn.

As part of that, maybe:

  • Let customers downgrade if they need to.  Take the pressure off.
  • Be prepared for upgrades, too.  Make them easier.  Capital will flow into existing, trusted vendors.  Eliminate gates & games around upgrades.  Make upgrades easier.
  • Let SMBs “pause” if they need to.  A pause is a lot better than churn.  Think about your gym membership.
  • Produce more content and more help.  Help your customers learn how to use your product even better.  A weekly webinar can be great here.
  • Try to give each customer a named Customer Support manager.  A real human that can help.

Your customers will want to stay if they can, and you are important to them.  That’s your North Star.  Help them stay, in whatever way you can.

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