Warning Signs of Customer Drop Off from Your Digital Service

Customer_Loyalty Customer_Churn Customer_Retention

Date: 2021-11-10 | Time of reading: 5 minutes (956 words)

A substantial chunk of our sales and marketing strategies focuses on increasing the quality website traffic of your business website and getting a consistent batch of new customers. Sounds fair, right? After all, you need to keep expanding your customer base to increase your revenue and earn profits.

Well, before we proceed, let’s have a quick look at three statistics:

65 percent of the revenue of a business comes from its existing customer base.
80 percent of your future revenue will come from just 20 percent of your current customers.
The cherry on the cake — it costs five to eight times more to acquire a customer than it does to keep the existing ones.

Do you recognize what these data reflect?

While developing strategies and attracting new customers is vital for the health of your business, it’s equally important to hold onto the ones that you’ve already got. Not only are they easier and affordable to keep, but they generate more revenue for your business too.

However, a large percentage of businesses do not make customer retention a priority, not at least from the beginning. It is why it goes on to become a serious boardroom concern. The challenge enhances when you address the fact that customers are now less forgiving — one-third of consumers switch companies after just one poor customer service experience. It sounds scary, doesn’t it?

However, customers do not drop off instantly in most cases. They, unintentionally, give subtle signs that voice their concern or dissatisfaction. If you look close enough, you can manage to recognize those warning signs in their buying behavior. You can then go into your crisis mode and take immediate corrective measures to win your customers back.

In this blog, we are listing the top five early warning signs that can tell you you’re about to lose your customer so that you can increase your customer retention rate. Here we go.

Top 5 Churn Indicators

1. Decline in Engagement

Customer satisfaction directly impacts customer engagement. However, do not mistake customer engagement for activity. While you should be on the lookout for decreased platform activity or action for regular purchasers, the way of engagement varies for customers at different stages.

If your regular customers have turned into loyal customers, their reduced engagement may reflect in their unwillingness to try out new products or features. If you’re lucky enough to have evangelist customers, they may show their dissatisfaction by reducing voluntary promotion or referral activities for your brand.

2. Change in Usage Patterns

A decline in platform or app usage indicates that customers are not getting what they need, and they are likely to drop off. Tracking KPIs, such as site abandonment rate, lapsed payments, and activity time, can help you recognize churn right before time.

For example, in your cloud storage SaaS model, if your customer begins using 500 gigabytes from a sudden drop of one terabyte of storage, you need to worry.

3. Increase in Complaints

You should be thankful for the customers who complain. For every one person who raises help tickets, there are at least two that do not. They just quietly leave without showing signs of churn. Therefore, take every complaint seriously. If there is a sudden increase in customer complaints, you should be on high alert.

Moreover, not everyone voices their concern directly. Customers may be talking negatively about you on social media or giving you lower ratings. Activate social listening to always be in the loop on the web.

4. Disinterest in Incentives

Who doesn’t like availing of the benefits of a sale, discount, or special offers? We’ve got one group - customers who are planning to unsubscribe.

If you see lower conversion rates than usual on your promotional offers and incentives, customers might be losing faith in your brand. And they don’t even want to indulge in profitable sales. Negative experiences induce such extreme actions, which discourage them from purchasing, even at a reduced price.

5. Unresponsiveness to Emails

When shoppers feel less connected and less loyal to your brand, their social interactions drop. Your email marketing metrics can reflect the signs of customer churn. You’re not going to get 100% open rates. However, if customers who have a history of opening your email most of the time are not doing so anymore, it is a sign of reduced customer engagement.

You need to adopt marketing practices that give people reasons to not unsubscribe. You can change your email marketing strategy and include content that may resonate more with your audience.

When you are armed with the ideal knowledge, you can quickly recognize the at-risk customers through these warning signs. It can protect your business from losing vital customer accounts. As a bonus, here is a quick tip on being proactive about reducing customer churn.

Utilizing Customer Loyalty Programs Before Churn Rates Rise

Customer loyalty programs keep your company top of mind, your customers engaged and regularly informed on deals catered to their interest. Customer loyalty programs should always be an even exchange of quality for data. A customer should be providing you with their email in exchange for:

Personalized promotion codes
Engagements on social media channels
Emails that only pertain to specific engagements.

If you want to learn more about how to retain customers with loyalty programs, read this article.

Conclusion

To scale up to the next business goal, you cannot afford to lose customers. To prevent customer churn, be proactive and work through the aforementioned methods to turn customer wins into loyalty. Keep reducing churn rate and increasing customer retention at the top of your priority list. It will make your business more profitable for the years to come!