Survey Reveals What Retailers Are Doing to Keep Customers From Leaving

Today’s company-customer relationship no longer revolves around one-off purchases of goods and services. We live in a subscription-based world where companies give their customers the flexibility of multiple pay options that best fit their needs. This model rewards companies which prioritize delighting their customers with stellar products, services and support. Benefits include predictable revenue streams, repeat purchasers, and word-of-mouth growth driven by customer referrals.

Yet, with its ease of use, low upfront costs and low setup efforts, it has become exceedingly easy for customers to cancel, downgrade or switch to a competitor via a few clicks.

The result? Immense churn and attrition.

Customer retention is imperative to building a business model that drives sustainable growth. However, there’s relatively little documented or developed best practices to follow. To expose a deeper level of insight, we asked 300-plus executives across 28 industries about their customer retention objectives, including what tactics they're using today and plan to use in the future.

We conducted this Customer Retention Survey to learn more from our respondents beyond their attitudes toward retention initiatives and tactics. What tools are they using to manage their business and grow their customer base? What do their churn and growth rates look like?

One common thread among all companies across industries: customer retention is a main focus. Ninety-seven percent of leaders say that retention is a top priority in 2019. But as expected, approaches differ.

Six key trends emerged from the survey data:

1. B-to-C companies know they must do a better job at customer retention.
2. B-to-B companies prioritize customer education, while B-to-C focus on support.
3. Today, most companies turn to discounts and deals to retain customers.
4. The future of customer retention is knowing when to engage and why.
5. Subscription businesses churn an average of 2 percent to 3.9 percent of revenue each month.
6. Only one in four subscription companies are growing more than 30 percent year-over-year (YoY).

The customer experience is universal. A paying customer wants to find a solution to a need from a product or service. When that transaction breaks down, customers leave. In spite of how many businesses may label or define them, cancellations come down to a handful of reasons related to product concerns, including inability to execute, changing needs, pricing concerns, poor service, and internal/company changes (like going bankrupt).

Many customers don’t actually want to cancel, they just need to be presented with the right information at the right time in order to address their unfulfilled need. Here at Brightback, we’ve found that by providing a personalized workflow based on the customer need, companies can reduce cancellations by 10 percent to 20 percent or more.

Now chief marketing officers and customer success and growth leaders can meet customers at the point of cancel, automatically serve up personalized offers that meet their needs, and collect data about why accounts left or were saved.

Our full report includes the monthly recurring revenue churn rates and YoY revenue growth rates from our respondents, as well as the top CRM, e-commerce, billing and customer support systems across B-to-C, B-to-B and hybrid companies.

Check out all the findings by downloading the free report here.

April Rassa leads product marketing and growth at Brightback, the industry’s first customer retention automation software for subscription businesses.