Customer who is affected by an unforeseen and very unpredictable circumstance with potentially severe consequences and widespread impact. Some examples include a pandemic (COVID-19) or an abrupt financial crisis (Banking Crisis of 2008).

Pivot quickly, if needed, to address the customer’s needs by providing relevant resources or timely product feature releases to help with issues at hand.

If they are truly impacted financially and are being told to consolidate spend, be willing to work with the client to make concessions versus them being forced to cancel their subscription.

Use ChurnZero segmentation to help prioritize support to those customers most affected by an emergency. Update health scores to focus on impacted verticals and very short-term churn factors. You can also use automated emails and in-app messages to communicate effectively to customers during critical time periods.

Customer who needs support or guidance but for whatever reason has unfortunately been neglected and is left feeling helpless.

Neglect usually happens slowly, and it creeps up on a customer relationship. Instead of focusing only on customers with fires, be sure to give attention to your other customers to help prevent them becoming an at-risk customer later down the road.

If you notice it’s been awhile since you’ve connected with a particular client, take a look at their account and conduct an audit of their utilization. Schedule a meeting to go over this account review with the customer. Put together a success plan that includes needed support and guidance to help them meet their gaps.

At the end of every meeting with a customer, be sure to get something on the calendar for your next engagement while that customer is top of mind, so it’s not accidently forgotten.

Refrain from declaring your past attempts to contact them. By drawing attention to the customer’s silence, you are only making them feel guilty, which isn’t going to spur action, but make them want to continue their avoidance behavior.
Vary your contact attempts. Switch up the day of the week and the time of day. It’s possible you’ve been trying to get them on the phone during a time they have a standing meeting.

Throw a Hail Mary. If it’s been way too long, send a handwritten note with a gift to their office. Most likely they’ll feel inclined to reach out to at least say thank you.

In-app communications and automated emails give Customer Success Managers other alternatives for reaching their customers. Our usage trend analysis can also find users and accounts that are trending down in engagement. This will allow Customer Success Managers to re-engage them before they ghost on you.

Customer who is unable to receive value from your product or service due to a mismatch of current needs and offerings.

First step is identifying a bad fit customer as early on in the process as possible. Don’t jump to conclusions but get a better understanding of who is a stretch fit customer and who is really a bad fit customer.

Be as upfront and honest as you can with the customer, so expectations are understood and both parties can make informed decisions for next steps.

Sometimes it’s necessary to count your losses and let these bad fit customers churn. It’s in everyone’s best interest as they can be a drag on growth, a waste of resources, and harmful to employee morale and industry word-of-mouth.

ChurnZero’s Account Segments are a powerful tool to let Customer Success Managers easily group customers together that share attributes and/or behaviors (i.e. bad fit customers). Tagging your bad fit customers will allow Customer Success Managers to adjust your engagement strategies to a low-touch model since their likelihood to churn is pretty much inevitable.

Customer who used to be your champion or main point of contact within the organization but has since left their role at the company.

Often times you won’t receive any advance notice about a champion leaving until after the exit has taken place. Instead of waiting for someone else from the organization to get around to alerting you, set up your own alerts that will ping you if usage ceases for a contact.

Check on LinkedIn to verify if your contact has in fact left the company. If so, send a message congratulating them on their new role and ask who the best person would be to connect with in their absence. (Also, you never know they could now be your new champion at another organization.

Reach out to the next point of contact to schedule a customized training session to help educate, engage, and inspire the remaining users to become your next champion(s).

ChurnZero Events are actions and activities that your users do inside your product. The tracking of these events allows you to create contact segments, account segments, alerts and tags based on deep behavioral data. For example, if you see that a user has been deleted, possibly signaling a departure, you could then set up an automated alert to start your investigation. You can also use contact profiles to easily help identify new champions and allies, so you are not left vulnerable to just one.

Let them know how much you value them as a customer.

Give constructive feedback, but at all costs avoid arguing as it will only be counterproductive to the team.

Express yourself with clarity and decisiveness. If the customer tries to intervene, re-state the plan as often as necessary.

ChurnZero Walkthroughs are multi-step guides that integrate into your product’s web interface and direct your users through specific features or simply display content at the ideal time. This can be a sly way of getting information to your Know It All customer without the hassle.