Churn playbook for Loss of Champion/Ghosted

Markus Siebeneick

Potential churn is probably one of the most stressful items for CSM.
As CSM's are so focused on value creation through Onboarding and the Adoption phases that the playbooks for lack of adoption tend to be the strongest and the ones that the team runs most frequently.

The loss of champion or a customer going silent/ghosting are two churn risk items that don't get as many repetitions by CSM's.
With fewer repetitions, those playbooks tend to not to get refined and developed as much.
It would be great to learn what others have done and the success rates of they are having with those playbooks.

Chad Horenfeldt

This all depends on the segment and the CS framework being used. If this is high touch, the CSM should have a trusted relationship with the customer. When there is a trusted relationship, the customer should be giving the CSM advanced notice if they are leaving - even if they are fired. This should give the CSM an opportunity to ask who is taking over ownership of the product.  

Additionally, you should have a contact - relationship outlined in your CRM where you know who all the key players are so if someone leaves, you know who the other contacts are.

If these aren't an option, here are other methods to try:

• Look at the people using your product and reach out to the heaviest users and ask for a call. Ask them to go through who the different people are in their org and who is covering for the person that is no longer there.
• Go through LinkedIn and see who the key players are. If you see a mutual connection, ask that person to introduce you. 
• Have your executives reach out - match titles
• Reach out with something of real value. Don't just ask for an intro call. If someone left, they most likely need help.
• Send Swag / books / food etc.. Get their attention. 

Regarding customers ghosting you, I wrote this very tactical approach that I've found works fairly successfully: Get Your Customers to Stop Ghosting You

Markus Siebeneick

Thank you Chad and really great to see the Stop Ghosting Article.
In the ideal scenario, our CSM's have been highly engaged and loss of Champion is not a surprise, but we know that not all engagements have that great level of connection.  I was looking to see if anyone was doing anything else that was interesting or unique and how they have put that into a Playbook.  I appreciate the different methods you suggested (will be adjusting to adding in the reach out with real value piece which is often missed)

For our Medium to High Touch accounts we have been using Chartloop for auto-account mapping (really cool tool if you have not seen it) and LucidCharts and marking everything in our CS tool.

I completely agree that customer usage is a great way to find active users and work with them to find the new points of contact.
The interesting part of Loss of Champion is that it should also be paired with How to Build a Champion and that you never want just one Champion.

Bri Adams

This is a great topic and as a Team Lead on our CSM team - this is absolutely something I worry about for my customers and my team's customers. We have regular brainstorming sessions to talk about some of our biggest challenges, and not surprisingly, Ghosting has absolutely been one of those topics. We came up with this article and Churn Monster to collect all of the tips and tricks we've found successful around this topic - Churn Monster - Ghosted Hope this helps!

We also have a whole playbook for different monsters, like Acquired, Ghosted, Manic, and more.

Chad Horenfeldt

Chartloop is cool! Thanks for sharing.