Give Retention the Attention it Deserves

With so many companies reducing staff levels this year, it is alarming that companies are making deep cuts to their customer-facing teams, like customer success. But under-investing in retention has always been a thing. Here are a few other trends I have witnessed as I have worked closely with teams across the technology spectrum.

• Ridiculous and unreasonable customer-to-team ratios
• pursuing product-led growth without investment in self-service assets
• Limited budget for hiring experience resources
• Lack of funding for supporting education and technology

Comparatively, these same companies make significant investments in Sales, Marketing, and Product. In addition to evangelizing Strategic Customer Success, part of my passion is helping retention leaders fight for balance in how we deploy our resources. And surprisingly, this remains an uphill battle for most companies.

What drives companies to look the other way?

Here are three reasons to consider:

1. We over-rationalize churn – It’s common to hear as I begin an engagement with a new company that a company churned because they are not ICP. Before you know it we have moved on forgetting about the event almost entirely. ICP should never be used to justify churn, and it is a tool to help focus our go-to-market efforts and not a predictor of customer health. If churn happens we should know how to learn how to improve.
   
2. Seemingly impossible complexities – I have heard frustrated teams say, “We have sold 100 unique solutions to 100 unique companies.” I get this feeling and have lived it firsthand, and this feeling is compounded by the uniqueness of what each customer needs to realize value. The good news: it isn’t impossible, and it isn’t that variable. More to come on this in the future!
   
3. The right leader can solve this – We are still hiring the leader that we think can solve it all but don’t put this unrealistic expectation on other key leadership positions. We support Sales with technology and training, Marketing typically has many vendors that support its operations in addition to macro theories like Account-based Marketing and Product has many different technologies and versions of Agile/Scrum methodologies to subscribe to. 

The great news is CXology brings a framework to ensure you reach your retention goals and can quickly identify and orchestrate opportunities across your company. CXology creates internal alignment with all teams so your customers have a succinct experience that consistently results in direct value for them. CXology will ensure your company reduces avoidable churn, you will identify the most impactful priorities to drive retention and your customer-facing teams will feel supported resulting in high levels of engagement.