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Steve Bernstein

If there's truly no retention benefit or expansion opportunity then your company will want to focus references or referrals for creating and activating "promoters."  Properly understanding customer sentiment from all key stakeholders in your accounts is always important. Having more promoters will not only help you create an "advocate army" but will also enable sales people to leverage LinkedIn networks and other sales tactics from promoter-advocates.

veronique-montreuil

@Steve Bernstein I think my message is not 100% clear.  There is retention and expansion opportunity. 

I am referring to predicting churn and retention when product adoption is not relevant. And where high NPS and CSAT is also not indicative of retention because many customers "Love working with you by we're leaving".  

Steve Bernstein

Our research consistently finds that the best way to predict churn is to engage your key stakeholder contacts in a feedback/voc program, where you commit to listen and addressing their feedback (i.e. not just a survey, but demonstrate that you truly care).  When you do this, we find that silent accounts are ~14x (!) more likely to churn than accounts tht give you feedback, even if that feedback is negative.  So an effective VoC approach can truly engage your customers and strengthen relationships while at the same time helping you understand and remindiate those that are disengaged. Here' a link with just some of the research... https://waypointgroup.org/silence-is-deafenin/

veronique-montreuil

Thanks, I'm familiar with best practices and research.  I have executive sponsor program, scaled engament program. We do QBRs, in some cases MBRs, we know our customers, engage on strategy. We do VOC and other engagement interviews. etc.   We apply all that, it does not address what I've described, but thanks.

Steve Bernstein

I'm sorry I'm not understanding your question... to @David L Ellin 's question, if customers churn because they outgrown you then sounds like either this is either a deliberate product strategy or an opportunity to create a new offering...?  And when you say you "do" all that, and assuming you have results, then I'm clearly not getting the gap... Are you gaining REPRESENTATIVE engagement / feedback from your customers? "Representative" often means 80/20 rule, where you would seek 80% financial coverage (which could mean 80% of accounts but unlikely), and do you have good representation from Decision Makers, Key Influencers, etc beyond your "primary point-of-contact?" Are you asking your customers to assess their outcomes/experiences relative to to other vendors that they may be working with so you have the competitive insight around what they don't like?  What results is your executive sponsor program driving -- are they involved in the feedback process for the accounts that are sponsoring so they directly hear the strategy challenge?