Not enough perceived value

Rachel Jennings

As the title states - I have recently taken on a global role, leading a CS team with a churn problem. When I dig it into the core reasons for churn, besides product gaps that are being mitigated. Customers are churning because of not enough perceived value. 

I was wondering what have you implemented to help your team to increase the perceived value of your product? 

I am embarking on a listening tour with our successful customers who love our product and get a lot of value out of it. 

ashley_martin

Hi Rachel, 
I think it is a great idea to listen to your successful customers to see what value they are getting out of your product.  Have you also interviewed any of the customers who have churned to find out why they are leaving?  I get leaving for no value, but if you really dig into the reasons you might get some good info.  

Also, is your team using success plans when they first onboard the customer?  I think that would be a good way to see if the success plan is being followed if they are seeing value from your product.

Yuya at Commune

Hi Rachel, I agree with your idea to listen to your successful customers to further explore the key points.
We often have a similar issue as we provide a community SaaS (the outcome is not always easily visible to our customers), we make sure we do QBR with key accounts where WE prepare&present how much impact the community has generated so far and how it will be.
Of course, it's ideal if your customers are able to prove it by themselves though.
Hope this helps!

Rich Rans

@Rachel Jennings How can you get mutual alignment on measuring value early in the relationship?
I've had some success reaching back into the pre-sales process and getting certain information captured early in the process.  If not then, its never to late to have this conversation with the customer:

• Why is the customer buying the product?  What outcomes are they trying to achieve?
• How can we measure this?

I'd suggest cataloging the most common outcomes and the corresponding measures.  Then you have a goal you can map back to and suggest you have helped them achieve.

Here are some example metrics I've seen used in products I've supported:

• Generate 100 leads per quarter
• Improve our close won rate 10%
• Deflect 1,000 call from our support desk per month

Thoughts?

Ed Powers

Lots of good comments here. I would add, @Rachel Jennings, that according to neuroscience, value is: 

• Subjective: we rightly focus on metrics improvement and ROI, but people don't make decisions based on numbers--they use numbers to justify decisions they've already made. Uncover and communicate specifically how your solution raises your contact's status, certainty, autonomy, relationships, or fairness in their work environment, and then use the numbers to prove progress is being made to impact them. 
• Relative: the brain computes value only when we face a free choice among alternatives. That means in the brains of customers, value is always ranked in relationship to other choices (e.g. a competitive offering or the status quo). This fact is almost always overlooked in Customer Success where we assume value is an absolute concept. We should always state the alternative in proper perspective, for example, "Compared to the way you used to do things, how much has changed?"
• Personal: in B2B, purchase, renewal and expansion decisions are made by a group of people, a Decision-Making Unit. Each member expects, experience, and remembers value differently, strongly influenced by the role they play. For example, an economic buyer usually places more value on achieving strategic or financial goals whereas a user buyer places more value on how your solution makes their lives easier. Your discussions about value must be tailored to your audience to be optimally effective. 

Also, "value" is more than benefits minus cost. Neuroscientists say the brain uses six factors to compute it. 

jaspreet

Hi Rachel,

IMO perceived value should get translated to actual value.

To do that, the process starts from the beginning of signing up the customer: 
Why did the customer choose us? How did we say our product fits the bill and in what time frame?
What was the objective?

Thereafter, it needs to be a regular process as in our CS models- Onboarding (Value during onboarding/Quick wins); Adoption, Engagement.
Through all these phases, we need to have regular reviews/discussions, showing how we have been helping them achieve the objective; hearing their challenges in achieving value, linking it to 'why and how' of us being chosen and most importantly, acting on them.

Perceived value can also be targeted by showcasing how we have solved similar problems for other customers through webinars, testimonials, case studies, leadership connects, involving the customer leadership in product roadmaps etc. All of these will help building strong brand perception besides above.

kmulhalljr

Hi Rachel, a lot of good advice shared, and a listening tour should shed some light. I tend to focus on adoption when it comes to addressing churn, perhaps because of my role as a Technical CSM. At the end of the day if there's employee buy-in for a product or products (mainly through education, preferably one that includes some type of internal LMS...possibly one that encourages and even rewards learning) unloading a product becomes MUCH more difficult for decision makers trying to keep a department or organization happy and productive. 

John Brunkard

I love this article on churn from Anita Toth
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6991373140157247488/ 

Jeffrey Kushmerek

At the end of the day, the CSM's need to be sharing the value with the customers more frequently. Don't just wait for the big EBR and QBR. If you find something that shows value (usage, quote, etc) share it! Send a quick loom, and make sure the champion/contract signer sees it as well- half the time when we work with companies with this problem, they are not exposing the value at the champion level