In this episode, Rod Cherkas, founder of HelloCCO and author of "The Chief Customer Officer Playbook," joins me to discuss customer success metrics, the evolving CCO role, and common mistakes in building lasting customer relationships.
Full episode here: loom.ly/RJSMC4s
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Robbie Kellman Baxter
@robbiebax
Subscription & Membership Model Expert • Keynote Speaker • Author of The Membership Economy and The Forever Transaction • Host of Subscription Stories Podcast
Robbie Kellman Baxter’s Tweets
❌ Subscription mistake: Inertia ≠ Loyalty
Your subscriber may be staying simply because leaving is too much of a hassle.
Be sure you can tell the difference.
#pricing #strategy #membership #subscription #customersuccess
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I’m honored once again to be a judge for ’s Cube Awards, honoring the subscription world’s best. Join me in Sheraton Downtown Dallas this May to find out who wins the industry’s most coveted award—and let me know if you’ll be there.
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💡 There are so many great subscriptions out there. The innovation and ingenuity never cease to amaze me.
#subscription #subscriptionbox #speakerlife
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Thanks to Paul Chambers, Christopher George, John Haji and the team at (Subscription Trade Association) for inviting me.
Will I see you at in Dallas at the end of May?
👋🏻 I’d love to say hello!
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🎤 Looking forward to speaking alongside Neil Hoyne, Nancy Harhut, Jesse Pujji, Jeremy King and Tamira C.
I’m also moderating a panel on “Retention & Revenue” featuring Amanda Dames, Michelle Parsons, Sarah Penna, and Ashley R.
#subscription #speakerlife #membership
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Track this one, too, because it can be a massive driver of churn and often doesn't need to be.
#subscription #membership #strategy #customersuccess #pricing
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Even if the issue is innocent—for example, the customer lost their credit card, and the new one has a different number—that customer might be dumped because there isn't a "good" payment method.
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Passive churn is when the customer's payment method is rejected somewhere in the billing process– by the bank, card processor, or your company's automatic algorithms. This is a special type of churn because the customer didn't intend to cancel, so it can be the easiest to fix.
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🚩 A quick and often overlooked retention booster: Solving for passive churn. 🚩
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The first place to start is by surveying current and former customers to ensure you adjust the right things. Uninformed tinkering can lead to more breakdowns. Research, tinker, test, & repeat until you solve for the core breakdown.
#subscription #membership #strategy
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Ex: If I’ve invited patrons to my restaurant, but the menu only has a couple of (delicious) items, and guests grow tired of them, or my dining area is great in the winter but features no outdoor seating for summer days, I need to do some tinkering.
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Common Culprit of High Churn #3: Product/Market Fit
The promise of your offering is not compelling to the target market; they understand what you have, but they just don't want it.
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There’s a half-life to enthusiasm; you want to engage new customers while that enthusiasm is still high.
Want to learn more about how to set up a world-class onboarding process? Grab my free guide here: loom.ly/0wbPPkw
#subscription #membership #strategy
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Ex: if I invite new patrons to my restaurant, but I don’t welcome them, show them where the dessert buffet is, or tell them about our amazing Saturday night Karaoke contest, they may not understand what a great fit our restaurant is for their family, and they may not return.
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Common Culprit of High Churn #2: Onboarding Breakdown
This happens when your onboarding process is absent or severely lacking in its ability to transfer new customers’ excitement into engagement.
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The restaurant itself might be a huge hit with older kids and parents, but if I'm marketing to young families or even "all families," I'm wasting my budget and attracting people likely to churn out.
#retention #retentionstrategies #subscriptionbusiness #subscription #membership
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Example: if I invite a bunch of new parents to a "great family-friendly restaurant," but I meant it was great for teens and adults, and I don't have high chairs, booster seats, or chicken nuggets. I might attract a lot of people who'll likely have a lousy time and not return.
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⚠️ Common Culprit of High Churn #1: Communication Breakdowns ⚠️
This type of churn happens when messaging is misaligned. Communication about your product/service may be misleading, you may need more messaging at critical touch points, or you may be messaging at the wrong points.
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Today marks the launch of Season 5 of the Subscription Stories podcast, and I brought back fan favorite Mighty Networks founder and CEO Gina Bianchini for it!
Check out the full episode here: loom.ly/doSCKfk
#subscription #subscriptionbusiness #membership
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Save this chart and use it to boost customer retention and identify and solve your culprits of churn. Over the next week, I’ll break down each driver of churn.
#retention #retentionstrategies #subscriptionbusiness #subscription #membership
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I’m a big fan of content creation, but it’s time we stop making bold, unsupported statements and start backing up claims.
Presenting opinion as fact wastes time, frightens people unnecessarily, and sets the wrong expectations about difficulty and success likelihood.
Helping your customer achieve their desired outcome is an ongoing task.
Want to learn more about onboarding? Grab my free guide here: bit.ly/3K54IJZ
#subscription #subscriptionbusiness #strategy #retentionstrategies
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Ensure that you have as many “retention and engagement” benefits as you have “acquisition” benefits. Layer in features that drive engagement between visits and deliver on your forever promise.
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If subscribers aren’t getting value from you on a regular basis, they’re going to cancel.
Along the way, and at critical points, ensure the customer is engaged.
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Start with onboarding. How will you make your product or service a habit for your subscribers?
1/ Get them what they need with as little friction as possible
2/ Reinforce the wisdom of their decision
3/ Show them how your best subscribers get all the value they’re entitled to
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Optimizing touch points for your ideal customers is a simple and surefire way to improve retention. Once someone buys anything from you, think of that initial transaction as the starting line, not the finish line for communications!
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The long view is so vital for subscription-based businesses. Short-term-oriented decisions to maximize revenue can actually kill the golden goose that is subscriptions.
Plan for forever – you and your customers will be better off for it.
#subscription #subscriptionbusiness
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They were focused on the next generation and invested in sustainable growth, while many public companies focused on short-term gains. By the time those companies failed, the CEO responsible for the short-sighted decisions was long gone.
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Over the course of working with subscription-based businesses, I started noticing that family-owned, closely-held businesses, as well as associations and co-ops, seemed to have a more organic understanding of what it took to thrive with memberships.
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I’m a huge fan of analytical rigor, but it’s time we start making room for creativity, emotion, and purpose.
Too much focus on databases, AI, and engineering muscle is unhelpful and outdated. It ignores ethics and results in derivative, unimaginative offerings.
#subscription
Remember, there are riches in the niches.
#subscription #membership #strategy #customersuccess #pricing
Third, if you see someone going through something and want to use their experience as an opportunity to "go deep," remember that you'll need to go way out of your way to stay in their orbit. Which may not be the right thing for you.
#motivationmonday #mondaymotivation #mindset
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...That seemingly unlikely friendship blossomed.
What does this mean for you? First, don't take it personally.
Second, know there'll be times when you're the best friend or have shared a unique (often difficult experience), and someone will lean on you hard–your turn will come.
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An example of this 3rd category: a friend of mine had a couple big promotions in a row and found herself w/ no time for anyone but her family and other "new CEOs." However, there was an exception–a neighbor who was able to join her 5AM walks 3x/week and who was a good listener.
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You can't transform yourself into a longtime pal or manufacture an experience you haven't shared, but the 3rd category is possible if the relationship is really important.
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Everyone else sort of gets ignored. (This is also true of personal changes like illness, becoming a parent, or divorce.)
This "pulling in" can be painful to the people left behind.
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There are 3 types of people they gravitate to:
1/ Longtime closest confidants (spouse, best friend, etc.)
2/ People who've gone through the same thing, even if they're initially weak ties (other entrepreneurs, job seekers, etc)
3/ People w/ a desire to connect "at that time."
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Let's talk about transitions and relationships. When someone goes through a major change, like a promotion, a layoff, or launching a new business, they often "pull in" to a smaller group of colleagues.
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Companies complain that “ustomers are fickle; loyalty isn’t a value.” This isn’t true. A subscription model demands loyalty from both parties. Before blaming customers, look inward. Have you earned the right to their trust and a “forever transaction”?
#subscriptionbusiness
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