Why are your users breaking up with you? 💔

Because of your EX!  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ Hey folks, I talk about my exes a lot. That is, my [C-ex](, my [P-ex,]( and my [U-ex 🤓]( In fact, everybody's talking about the "EX-es" in the product world, but show me a company that actually has a documented cross-functional [Customer Experience strategy.]( I don't know of one. And then the churn-prevention tactics that SaaS companies unleash on their users as their last resort while the customer is already walking through the door... It's cringe. The relationship of your customers with your company happens at multiple touchpoints (which are the responsibility of different teams). If your marketing, product, sales team, or even finance team drops the ball - there's no amount of discounting or apologizing from the CS team that will help. Imagine this dynamic in a romantic relationship...and you'll sure know what I mean 😅 Here's a list of CX touchpoints + pitfalls leading to churn at each + what to do to avoid them: [Image] - Marketing comms + Content (Responsible: Marketing + Sales Team) - this is obviously the first touchpoint on the prospective customer's journey. This is the step where you actually lose most of your customers...before they've even had a chance to become a customer. Why? Let me give you an example. I can't count the number of times when I got a cold email, or worse still - phone call, and I left without a clue why this person was even bothering me and what their product even was (or if they were generous enough to explain that - how on Earth did they think it would help *me*?! Why would *I* need a development agency as a head of marketing?) Also - overpromising and underdelivering, not being clear on the amount of technical or human resources required to use the tool successfully - is setting up your customers for failure, bad Customer Experience and quick churn before they have even become your customers. - Website - (Marketing, Product Marketing, Engineering) needless to say, if your prospect lands on your website and they don't know what's going on, or the signup button doesn't work on mobile half of the time, their "customer experience" will end faster than it begins. - Signup flow (Product Marketing, Product, Engineering) - The classic. Either a missed opportunity to[collect information on your potential customer]( to customize their signup flow completely, or asking *too many* questions that are not then being used. Why ask about the role and goals if you're then subjecting your trial user to a one-size-fits-all experience anyway?  - Trial experience (Product Marketing + sales) - Again: very few SaaS companies pay attention to the trial signups *needs* during the trial. The specific page or campaign your trialists are signing up for are a good indicator of what they are looking for - e.g. if someone signs up for Userpilot's trial from the [user engagement]( page, they should see content related to in-app engagement first in their user onboarding. If they sign up from the [user sentiment page]( - they should be shown Userpilot's survey capabilities: [Image]Another big pet peeve of trial users: are your sales people helping, or hurting their experience? Are the emails relevant and helpful, or are they just boilerplate nags to book a demo? - *For sales-led companies: Sales Process (sales): how helpful are your sales people in ensuring your prospects that a) your product can meet their expectations and help them achieve their goals b) that it provides better value and is more suitable for their use case than their competitors? Are they able to answer even the most technical questions? Or are they mostly wasting their prospects' time? - Upgrade experience + Checkout + Billing (Product Marketing + Product + Operations/Finance/Accounting) - now, there's nothing worse than going through a poor checkout experience, getting a passive-aggressive payment reminder, or worse still (this is a real-life horror story we experienced ☠️) getting cut off the tool when your card fails due to some clerical error...on a bank holiday...in the middle of an important campaign. This is an instant "churn - hate - smear on social media & G2" trigger. - Onboarding experience (Product Marketing + Product + CS) - much related to what I mentioned in the trial experience part - your primary onboarding should be mostly focused on your users goals and JTBDs. Aimlessly showing them around your product is a big no. - Secondary onboarding + advanced user experience (Product Marketing + Product + CS) - feature requests, new feature announcements - As customers become more familiar with your product, they should start to explore more advanced features. Your Product Marketing team should make sure the customers are informed about these features with subtle, reactive in-app experiences, and the Product team should ensure that they are intuitive and add value. The CS team can also provide advanced training and support to help customers make most of these features. - Product experience (Product, Engineering, CS...) - the obvious and what is most commonly called "user experience": is the product easy and pleasant to use? Is the time-to-value short? Are the bugs and dead-ends taken seriously and fixed in a timely manner? Are "quality of life" improvements prioritized over the "shiny new features"? - Support experience - fast, proactive and friendly support is good. But you know what's better? Self-serve support - can the user solve their issues on their own when they need to solve them (e.g. with a resource center), not when your support agents are online? [Image] - Customer Success experience - do your CS agents proactively reach out to customers, understand their needs, and provide personalized advice and support? Do they point the customers to the right features or plans when they need it? - Account Expansion experience (Product Marketing + CS + Product) - does your product provide contextual upgrade nudges when the user nears their plan limit, and to help them discover premium features contextually, in a way that's helpful to their use case? Is the upgrade process easy and self-serve? And the opposite - can the users remove seats without having to *call* their CSM? - Retention experience (Product Marketing, Product, CS) - do you provide in-app experiences on every stage of the users journey to keep them engaged, or do you leave it till they start falling into the "slipping away users" segment? - Offboarding + cancellation experience (CS) - is your cancellation flow self-serve and fairly frictionless, but not so frictionless that you don't take the opportunity to collect important churn survey information and let your customer...change their mind? - Recovery experience (CS, Sales) - do your CSMs and Salespeople really try to understand what went wrong and try to explain how to fix that in the recovery attempts, or are they (again) just sending nagging boilerplate emails? As you can see, your customers' journey and the resulting Customer Experience involves pretty much all the stakeholders in your company. How do you align them to make sure e.g. your Billing Team doesn't mess up all the effort your marketing and sales teams have put into winning that customer by sending them e.g. passive aggressive payment reminders, or worse still - the product team cutting them off when one payment fails? Now, a shocking statement: It's better to be just mediocre everywhere...than horrible at any of the above. First and foremost: you need empathy: [Image] Liked the rant? You can now[binge-rant on Amazon!Â]( [Image]( [OR come to our London Book Launch and get a FREE copy!]( We have very limited spaces left for the June event so [RSVP]( now to grab your invite 😉 [Image]( There will be tons of cool PMs from different companies to network with, open bar & pizza, and even more food-for-thought with these 3 LIVE talks: [Image][Image][Image] Hope to see you there... Meanwhile, see you next week! [Image] Emilia Korczynska, Head of Marketing at Userpilot I'm a marketing manager obsessed with product growth. 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