Customer Cancellations - Who owns this process?

Lauren Dunlop

Hi!

Our organisation are in the process of introducing an account management function and we are currently looking to build a frame work of which teams/roles are responsible for what. 

In the model which we are considering, Account management will ultimately own renewal and upsell conversations. However, what does this mean for cancellations??

If you have an account management function working alongside Success in your organisation I would love to understand more about how you divide roles/responsibilities...what works for you?

Who manages the cancellation process? I would love to hear your views. 

Lauren

Russell Bourne

@Lauren Dunlop in most cases I argue whoever owns the renewal/upsell also owns the cancellation aversion and order processing.  It's natural because usually renewal and cancellation are the possible outcomes of the same conversation.  From a leadership point of view it also eliminates the risk of a rift between teams if one feels the other is throwing shirt over the wall at them (The Good Place, anyone?).

Am I right in assuming your Success function would be responsible for things like implementation, adoption, sentiment, and so on?  If so, you can consider putting them in charge of the post-cancellation reason survey.  CS leadership would then compile that info and share it with your cross-functional leaders who have control over each churn reason.

gurd3v

Keep cancellation separate from the role that is owning renewals and upsells. I've been in a role where I simply talk to customers all day that indicate a severe dissatisfaction with our product and/or want to cancel. This allows me to step in as the "point of escalation" and try to problem solve and reset expectations. I don't own a book of business long term, but step in on occasion. 

What this does is hyper focus CSM's on renewals, upsells and QBR like activities. Then, someone like me can be hyper focused on "saving" business and hopefully keeping them longterm. 

What we've found is our team can retain about 50% of the business looking to leave (up from about 20% Jan 2019) and we can collect valuable insight and collaborate across leadership in other orgs to drive behavior changes.

If your organization doesn't have enough volume to support a headcount to this initiative, my recommendation would be to have the manager/leader own this because the information coming out of these conversations help drive organizational change to drive down churn. 

Happy to answer questions or chat more about this framework!

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Gurdev Anand
Sr. Customer Experience Manager
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Original Message:
Sent: 11-06-2020 03:38
From: Lauren Dunlop
Subject: Customer Cancellations - Who owns this process?

Hi!

Our organisation are in the process of introducing an account management function and we are currently looking to build a frame work of which teams/roles are responsible for what. 

In the model which we are considering, Account management will ultimately own renewal and upsell conversations. However, what does this mean for cancellations??

If you have an account management function working alongside Success in your organisation I would love to understand more about how you divide roles/responsibilities...what works for you?

Who manages the cancellation process? I would love to hear your views. 

Lauren





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Lauren Dunlop
Encompass Corporation
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