The Customer Offboarding Process May Be As Important As The Onboarding Process

Does your organization have an onboarding process for your customers? The idea behind this step of the customer’s journey is to help the customer get the most benefit from a company’s products and services. For example, a customer buys software. The customer success department takes the time to properly onboard the customer, teaching the basics and shortcuts that will give them a better user experience, thereby eliminating simple questions and problems a customer might otherwise have. Or, a car salesperson might take time to help the customer understand the technology in a new car they just bought and how to maximize their experience.

That onboarding process also helps confirm that a customer made a good choice in deciding to do business with the company. One of the most important steps in the customer’s sales journey is to get them excited about what they bought after they bought it.

What most companies don’t do is spend time at the end of the customer’s journey, offboarding them to understand why they are leaving, what might be done to keep them and getting feedback to help them be better for future customers. In other words, the customer offboarding process is typically neglected.

On a recent episode of Amazing Business Radio, I interviewed Tony Sternberg, CEO and co-founder of ProsperStack, a platform that helps reduce customer churn and increase the customer’s lifetime value, about creating a solid offboarding experience. Here are five ideas from that interview, followed by my commentary:

Get Feedback as the Customer Leaves You – This is the foundation of the offboarding process. A good offboarding experience will help you understand why customers leave. This could give you an opportunity to save the customer, but if they already have one foot out the door and don’t plan to bring it back in, a good offboarding process could provide valuable information you can use to prevent other customers from leaving for the same reason—provided you’re willing to act on that information and feedback. In addition, when done the right way, it allows you to end your relationship on a positive note. Sternberg said, “Customers remember the end of their experience with a company to a higher degree. If you leave a bad taste in their mouth, you not only negatively impact the customer’s experience, but also impact what that customer tells their friends and their network.”

Track Your Customer’s Cadence – In addition to getting feedback as a customer leaves you, understanding customers’ buying patterns can give you indicators of which direction they are heading. If you track patterns of your best customers (revenue, repeat business, etc.) and compare them to the patterns of your worst customers, you may garner insights to help you spot when a customer is most likely to decide to stop doing business with you. For example, Netflix watches its customers very closely. If it notices a pattern of very little use, it delivers different content and marketing messages that could entice the customer to stay.

AI and Automation Can Help You Retain Customers – Sternberg recognizes the power of the digital world we live in. Automation and AI are helping to drive positive customer experiences. If you’re tracking your customer cadence and notice customers are exhibiting a pattern similar to the ones who eventually leave, automation can kick in to deliver the right marketing messages, promotions and content that can hopefully reverse the exit pattern. Ideally, these are personalized messages. And as nice and convenient as automation is, you may also want to consider a personal, human-to-human outreach.

Focus on Acquisition and Retention – Sternberg says, “Often companies are more focused on product development and customer acquisition versus retention.” Retention, at least for most companies, is a big part of a successful growth strategy. It’s important to make the sale, but if at the same time you have a large number of customers leaving, it’s like a hamster wheel. That little hamster is running hard but going nowhere fast. Reducing churn (customers leaving) is as important, if not even more so, than customer acquisition. Remember, it’s less expensive to keep the customers you have, repeat customers typically spend more than one-off customers, and when you make your customers happy, they tell others. But when they do leave, a good offboarding process can end the relationship positively and leave the door open for future opportunities.