I finally stopped tracking churn wrong after 9 months of bad data

Tbh I kept looking at total customer churn each month but never separated voluntary vs involuntary churn. Last month I found out 40% of our cancellations were just expired credit cards nobody followed up on. We fixed the dunning emails and saved 12 accounts in one week. Anyone else had a similar wake up call about segmentation?

3 comments

3 Comments

wade2509d ago

Oh man that hits close to home! My small cleaning business had the same issue with credit card declines - we just assumed people were canceling but really they just forgot to update their payment info. Once we started separating the two types of churn we recovered like 8 clients in two weeks with a simple email reminder. It's amazing how many "lost" customers are just waiting for a nudge.

the_anthony8d ago

@wade250 that's the REAL tea right there, so many people just need a little nudge.

ward.jamie9d ago

Man I feel like an idiot reading this because we literally had the same problem at my shop for like two years. We were running around blaming bad service or whatever and it turns out 40% of our churn was just people with expired cards. When we finally added a simple 3-day grace period with a text reminder we recovered 12 clients in one week. Feels like we were leaving money on the table just because we didn't want to admit we were too lazy to check payment status. The sad part is I still have clients who ignore the reminder for three months and then act shocked when we cancel their service. We're basically running a payment reminder business that happens to also clean houses I swear.