How to improve your retention rate – use this guide 

Every wished you had a playbook to combat churn?

Now, you do.

Churn hurts a lot – but not something enough agencies focus on.

Agencies that used the below framework have saved millions of dollars in revenue.

Now it’s time for you to try it too.

Check it out below.

1. Data Hygiene.

Enter all key data into your CRM.

• Start date, end date, contract type (MRR/once-off), deal amount, service sold, account manager name, salesperson’s name, company lifecycle stage (current client/past client) etc.
• Ensure you have a consistent onboarding & onboarding process to have this data 100% up to date in your CRM every single day.
• Note: cleaning this data will take longer than you think. Start early.

2. Set up the right reports on your retention dashboard.

• Tickets by status, broken down monthly into the following categories (more on the ticketing later):
  • Feedback received
  • Email Sent
  • Meeting held
  • Successful retention
  • Failed retention

     

• # of clients churned each month (broken down by account manager)
  • Use this to see averages per month, and prepare for seasonality as well.

     

• Clients churned within 90 days
  • Use this to review the sales process & understand why they churned so quickly.

     

• # of clients coming out of contract in the next 3 months
  • Combine this with positive client CSAT = clients to up-sell, cross-sell, ask for Google reviews & referrals

     

• # of new clients started per month (and forecasted to close in upcoming months)
  • Forecast capacity & hiring needed to service your clients

     

• # of clients with no assigned account manager
  • Use this to “assign” accounts to account managers, and review each account manager’s capacity with the dashboards before you do so.

     

• Revenue managed by account manager (& number of accounts per AM)
  • Use this to track workload & capacity

     

• Clients not contacted > 7 days
  • By individual account manager
  • By team name

     

• CSAT Reports
  • Aggregated Client CSAT score per month over time (broken down by team, and broken down by account manager)
    • Use this to spot seasonality, and come up with proactive ways to combat
    • Plus, monitor high performers as well as those who need more coaching
  • Overall CSAT pie chart across all clients (% of happy, neutral, unhappy)
    
  • CSAT by team member by month 
    
  • CSAT by team

     

• Average customer lifespan & average lifetime value of the client
  • Monitor this every month to see how these are improving/declining with time.

     

• Top KPIs to appear at the top of the dashboard:
  • Monthly retention rate
  • Aggregated CSAT by Account Manager over time (in months)
  • Up-sells & cross-sells goal + attainment
  • Clients not contacted > 7 days

3. Communications.

• 1 email recap end of week (bare minimum)
• Share 1 “win” during the week
• Monthly reporting session, in person or virtual, at the beginning of each month (recap last month + focus for month to come)
• Quarterly review session – assessing overall CSAT &  formulating strategic plans for the next quarter
• All interactions to be logged & measurable within your CRM (should appear in individual account manager & team dashboards)

4. Launch CSAT.

• 1 question CSAT automated via your CRM  monthly
  • On a scale of 1-10, how likely are you to recommend [company name] to a friend or colleague?

     

• Send CSAT to the main decision maker/budget holder at the company
  • Ensure the right contacts are attached to the company
  • Ensure each contact has a “label” that describes their role (eg: decision maker, influencer, daily contact, supporting team, etc).
  • Pull a list of “decision makers” using this marker, and automate CSATs to them monthly (do not do this manually, you will forget).
  • As time progresses, you can also create separate lists to survey non-decision makers too.

     

• Create alerts for notifications for the “Head of Retention” (or equivalent)
  • Create email/Slack alerts for all responses to go to this person.
  • Ensure 1 person receives these alerts & owns successful resolutions. 
    • If more than one person is responsible, that means no one is responsible.

       

• As a priority, the Head of Retention is to reply to:
  • Negative CSATs first – these are at the highest risk of churning. Call them immediately + send an email recap + lock in a time to resolve (create some templates for common resolution pathways)
  • Then, respond to neutral responses. If left unattended, these will churn very soon. Call them + send an email recap + lock in a time to resolve.
  • Then, respond to “happy” responses. Call them to thank them for the feedback, and when the time is right, ask them for a Google review or referrals.

     

• Ensure you respond to negative & neutral feedback within the hour. 

5. Set up a ticketing system to track & monitor CSAT.

• Over time, it will be difficult to track the volume of inbound responses & stages of each.

   

• Create a ticketing system (within your CRM), create a kanban board, and move the client through stages like:
  • Feedback received
  • Client called
  • Email sent
  • Successfully Resolved
  • Unsuccessfully Resolved

     

• As time progresses, aim to decrease time to resolution as much as possible (# of days from feedback received to resolution)

6. Set up a “Clients Retained” tracker to monitor churn prevention

• As you go through the above process, ensure any clients that you have proactively retained are tracked for future reference.
  • Pro-active work is often hard to measure impact – so ensure you can easily quantify this effort by creating a system to capture these wins.
  • If at any point someone asks you “How much money have you saved the business?” – you should have a clear MRR figure within seconds.
• To do this, ensure you set properties in your CRM for:
  • Retention effort status (meeting booked, saved, lost)
  • Successfully “saved” date (the date you stopped the client from churning)
  • The solution offered to save the client (discount off next bill, free service line inclusions, waived invoice, etc.)

The wrap up

Ensure you make client retention a priority.

Set goals.

Create reports.

Track & monitor progress.

And most importantly, communicate “better” with clients.

The moment you do, it’s a game changer.