Outsourced Churn Management Guide: Why & How
Have churn but don’t know what to do about it? Outsourced churn management may be the answer.
From identifying the root causes of customer attrition to designing and implementing solutions, churn management is no small task. For busy teams, outsourcing some of this work to a trusted third-party consultant or agency can fill gaps in expertise, while saving time and money.
In this post we’ll explore your outsourcing options, from fractional CCOs to churn consultants and software automation. But first let’s consider why you may, or may not, want to outsource your churn reduction efforts.
Pros & cons of outsourcing churn management
Churn is a complex problem, and it can feel overwhelming. If you don’t have the time or in-house expertise, then plugging-in an outsourced professional or team is a fast and economical option.
For example, a fractional CCO (Chief Customer Officer) can jump in and guide your strategy on a part-time basis for significantly less than a full-time salary.
Another benefit of outsourcing is that your focus remains on what you do best. Churn management consultants can take on the time-consuming task of conducting customer interviews and analyzing feedback, and software automations can reduce the work that would otherwise have to be done by an employee.
Many of your churn management efforts will be a long game, but there are some quick wins, too. A cancellation flow is one of the fastest way to improve your customer retention metrics, and ProsperStack Retain makes it easier than ever to see immediate results.
On the other hand, outsourcing churn management comes with some risks, such as reduced control, potential cultural barriers and data security concerns. While developing in-house expertise may be somewhat difficult in the beginning, it will pay off in the long run. Truly understanding your churn requires deep knowledge of your product, market and customer needs. Can a consultant ever really match the understanding and commitment of an internal hire?
Of course, you don't have to go all-in either way. You can mix and match in-house expertise with various outsourced functions, which we'll look at next.
Outsourcing options
Churn management activities span the entire customer lifecycle. As such, you have a variety of options when considering outsourcing:
Fractional CCO - A part-time Chief Customer Officer provides executive leadership to coordinate your customer-focused efforts at a fraction of the cost.
Churn management consultants - These specialized experts help your business get a handle on churn. Using customer interviews and data analysis, they identify root causes and design strategies to reduce customer loss.
Customer support BPOs - When you think of outsourcing, you probably think of call centers. Utilizing a great customer support partner means less churn.
Software automation - From churn prediction to cancellation flows, technology offers scalable solutions with clear, trackable ROI.
Fractional CCO (Chief Customer Officer)
Customer satisfaction and retention efforts span your organization, but more and more businesses are elevating customer-focused leadership to the C-suite in the form of a Chief Customer Officer.
Like a full-time CCO, a fractional CCO provides expertise and leadership focused on customer satisfaction, retention and growth. But because a fractional CCO offers their expertise on a part-time (e.g. one day per week) or contract basis, this is a budget-friendly option.
Responsibilities
A fractional CCO is responsible for creating and implementing customer-centric strategies to drive growth and retention. This includes:
Analyzing customer feedback and behavioral data to identify pain points and create action plans to improve the customer journey
Establishing KPIs to track customer satisfaction
Educating staff on the importance of a customer-centric culture
Organize cross-functional teams to align business objectives with customer needs, thus delivering consistently exceptional CX
Top fractional CCOs
Chameleon Collective - “We Blend In. You Stand Out.” A team of business veterans across five areas of expertise (branding, marketing, experience, commerce and sales), the Chameleon Collective can transform your business through visionary leadership. The Collective’s fractional CCO service is for businesses seeking growth and retention solutions they can't address in-house.
Chris Hood - A former digital strategy lead at Google and author of Customer Transformation, Chris Hood has over 35 years of experience in business development. He’s worked with Fox & Disney, and founded multiple companies with revenue over $500 million. Work with Chris to unlock unparalleled growth and customer loyalty.
Growth Molecules - Customer success advisory firm Growth Molecules helps companies protect and grow revenue with proven methodologies to identify needs and plan impactful solutions. Highly rated on G2, this award-winning consulting team knows what it takes to increase revenue through customer success.
Churn management consultants
Churn management is the business process of identifying why customers cancel and deploying strategies to retain more of them. It begins with collecting customer feedback and behavioral data, analyzing it to identify the root causes of churn, designing interventions and acting on them to improve customer retention.
Churn analysis can be a complex and time-consuming process. Churn management consultants take this burden off your hands, providing the expertise and bandwidth to get real results.
Top consultants
Tom Burrell, Retention Coach - Retention Coach helps subscription businesses improve retention fast via proven systems, frameworks, real-world case studies and 60,000 hours of practical retention experience: bespoke consultancy or access to the entire Retention Coach playbook via the Retention Accelerator.
Anova Consulting Group - With decades of experience conducting win-loss and churn analysis, Anova provides B2B companies with insights that drive sales and customer retention. Their method: in-depth phone interviews with customers shortly after they’ve churned. From this timely and candid feedback, Anova identifies your business’s strengths, weaknesses and gaps.
ChurnRX - A retention analytics and coaching platform, ChurnRX‘s mission is to help recurring revenue businesses accelerate growth through customer retention. Their churn analysis service provides expert customer data analysis, tailored strategies for each department, tracking and executive training.
Clozd - Utah-based Clozd provides win-loss and churn analysis, as well as a software platform to support interviews, surveys and data analysis. Let Clozd conduct customer interviews with your existing and recently churned customers to identify pain points and at-risk accounts. They transcribe and tag all interviews to highlight themes and trends.
100 Celsius - While not strictly a churn management consultancy, this specialized subscription growth agency helps Shopify stores “shatter MRR plateaus” and boasts an average of 30% churn reduction.
Customer support BPOs
When you think of outsourcing, you probably think of a call center. This traditional type of customer support BPO (business process outsourcing) can handle all customer questions, problems and technical issues via phone, email, social media and live chat. Learn more about call center outsourcing from HubSpot.
Software automation
Automation is another way to manage churn while freeing up your team for other activities. Instead of outsourcing to other people, you outsource to software.
When it comes to churn management automation, you have a lot of options:
Churn prediction - Using machine learning, this software analyzes customer behavior to identify at-risk customers, allowing businesses to take proactive measures to retain them.
Feedback and analysis - By facilitating the collection and analysis of customer feedback, this type of software helps businesses identify trends and take corrective actions to improve the customer experience.
Customer success management - CS solutions help businesses track and manage customer interactions, fostering a customer-centric culture and increased customer satisfaction.
Retention analytics - By leveraging volumes of data, such as engagement, purchase history and customer service interactions, retention analytics software can help businesses identify factors that reduce churn.
Cancellation flow software - Automate the customer offboarding experience. Collect valuable feedback and boost retention with targeted offers. Use advanced segmentation, A/B testing, AI offer optimization and seamless integrations to reduce churn 10-39% with ProsperStack Retain.
Want to know more? We cover this subject in greater detail here:
Final thoughts
You have many options when it comes to outsourcing churn reduction, from fractional CCOs to consultants and automation. Of all these, cancellation flow software may be the most immediate and cost-effective solution to the problem of customer churn. Using ProsperStack Retain, your high-volume subscription business can reduce churn by 10-39%, practically overnight.
