Leading Metrics of Retention: We all know it can take a while for retention issues to show up, so fi

shamsao

Would love to get people's perspectives on leading indicators and if there are any potential flags to be careful of for a particular indicator.  For example, we know if you sell a SaaS product that if people are not using it, that's a huge flag for churn -- but just because they are clicking on a particular screen a lot, doesn't mean they are necessarily getting value (good be an interface design issue).

Examples:

• Logins
• NPS
• Usage of a particular product feature

What else?

 

Janet Smith

We've been tracking things like webinar attendance, unpaid invoices, advocacy activities (testimonials, success stories, online reviews), and meaningful interactions (like QBR or strategy conversations).

Alex Turkovic

All great leading indicators so far (product usage, billing issues, training attendance, NPS, etc.). 

I think it is useful to look at cohort analysis of product usage across the entire customer base. My comparing one specific customer with the average usage over time, you'll be able to judge if your target customer is dropping off faster than others - or if there is an unusual spike in usage at a specific point after activation: this event could be used as a reason for pro-active engagement with the customer to learn what they are doing differently.

Effie Mansdorf

I have recently launched a customer education platform. That means webinars of new features and best practices, as well as newsletters that go out every 6 weeks with "what's new". We measure signups and engagement in these webinars, as well as follow up surveys. Newsletters get open a click rate measured

We don't have telemetry, as our company is a cyber security tool. So these offline measurements are very useful in retention prediction. If there is no engagement in the above activities it can mean a red flag for customer health. 

Kristen Lishman

I love the "what's new"! I initiated something like this in a previous role and we got a lot of engagement from it.

Alex Turkovic

Agreed. @Effie Mansdorf - do you handle things like "release notes" in What's New? If so, do you guys word-smith them to be more customer-facing or leave them as the product org created them? What other content goes in that section?

Effie Mansdorf

While there is a link to the release note within the newsletter itself, we do not include it. This is because it's to technical, and not the focus purpose of the newsletter in the first place, which is to promote engagement and show value.

Here are some points:

It's designed by marketing, so it has a great look and feel.

It's written by marketing with the information given by product.

As a supplement to explaining the feature, we add why this is valuable and who can benefit (WIIFM)

It's promoted by CS as a value realization and adoption tool.

 

Andreas Knoefel

I always start with the jointly planned customer journey: What milestones are we expected to reach when and how to we validate that we are there (or not)? That may include #active users, etc, but also other indicators like #transactions processed, #product defects or such as a proxy for $$$ earned/$$$ saved. The decision makers care only about $$$, not how many clicks someone did in a day. That is your language, not theirs.  They are making the decision to renew or leave, so you need to speak in their language about their goals.

You deviatate positively, you become a Champion account and are a prime candidate for webinars, white papers, customer counsel and other celebrations of your excellence, and we look into what made you so super-successful to clone your success.

When you are falling behind, it's time to assess root causes and possible interventions.

You can read more in my 2 part article https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/leverage-your-champions-andreas-knoefel/ and https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/recover-rescue-farewell-andreas-knoefel/

Brittney Pelfrey

We are a month to month Membership platform, and have found that lagging spikes in cancellation can be detrimental to the business, and put us in fire fighter mode. 2 things we have created to stay ahead of any negative (or positive) trends are 1. Weekly New User Cohort Reporting, to track retention down to week of joining the Membership. This allows us to quickly tell if a new initiative or feature has immediate impact on retention. 2. Customer Health Score - with 5 key factors around product usage, product adoption (time to value), NPS, financial health, engagement in emails with us (opening, clicking through, etc) and referrals. 

Steve Bernstein

We use participation (response) rates from feedback requests as a key measure of relationship strength, as this provides a powerful predictor of retention. Everyone knows that "silent" accounts are far more likely to churn, so give them a reason to respond to your feedback requests via a commitment to follow-up and address what they are telling you. Newsletters, release notes, education, etc are all good things but they don't really represent "engagement." Show your customers that feedback doesn't go into a black hole. When you do that we find that response rates approach 80%+ (depending on segment) and that those non-responsive accounts in this regard are 14x (!) more likely to churn.

Don't settle for response rates that don't represent your business (e.g. are you hearing from only 10% of your revenue?). It's not rocket science to get better customer engagement, but you have to be willing to invest as well.  If you don't want to hear what customers think then don't ask. But if you want to drive retention and expansion, engage your key customer contacts in understanding what's working well and what needs improvement so you can address it (and stop calling this a survey or an "NPS" -- just because you facilitate the process online doesn't mean it's a survey!). If your customers still don't respond then they are telling you that they don't care to make the time for this important activity.

Petra Makaremi

These are great @Effie Mansdorf! Another approach is to have CS collaborate on product update with Marketing and really use this as an opportunity to design the next step for your customer - why and how they can/need to use this. I found a practical/jargon free format to work best (or at least not too technical), with a CTA on your main feature to sign up for beta access/CSM consultation/Webinar showing a cool use case or best practices/[enter other engagement] to deliver fantastic results (and data).

gurd3v

I would add a metric tracking how many support cases are being created by customer. 

Lots of support tickets might mean there's little adoption or customer has some confusion on how to use the product.