Today on the show we have James Mulvany, founder and CEO of Podcast.co and Radio.co In this episode, we talked about what drives James to keep building new companies in the content and streaming space, why the podcast industry is still full of untapped potential, and the importance of a personal touch in customer retention. We also discussed why James thinks world-class customer service is a key to resurrecting churned customers, why social media ads are underrated for retaining customers, and h...
Mar 25, 2020•31 min•Ep. 54
Today on the show we have Emmanuel Straschnov, co-founder and co-CEO of Bubble. In this episode, we talked about the rise of no-code tools’ popularity, why Bubble decided to raise funding, and the challenges they face with churn due to the nature of their product. We also dived into the challenges Bubble faced when designing their customer onboarding, how their pricing strategy has evolved over the years, and why Emmanuel believes that qualitative insights are more valuable than quantitative ana...
Mar 18, 2020•38 min•Ep. 53
Today on the Churn FM we have Nathan Barry, founder, and CEO of ConvertKit! In this episode, we talked about what drove Nathan to start ConvertKit, how switching to focus on a niche has impacted the company's product strategy and churn rate, and how it helped Nathan to focus on the right customer feedback. We also discussed when it doesn't make sense to worry about churn, the concept of gradual engagement and how ConvertKit applied it in their product, and why Nathan thinks every company is doin...
Mar 11, 2020•42 min•Ep. 52
Today on the Churn.fm, we have Olga Andrienko, Head of Global Marketing at SEMrush. In today's episode, we discussed SEMrush’s rapid growth and how it affected their churn rate, why they decided to switch their focus to customer retention, and how they use social media to identify their ideal customer profile. Olga also shared how SEMrush used Easter Eggs to gamify user engagement and how they use the SEMrush community Facebook group to get users actively involved in product development. As usua...
Mar 04, 2020•38 min•Ep. 51
Today on Churn.fm, we have Ziv Peled, Chief Customer Officer at AppsFlyer In today's episode, we discussed how Ziv built AppsFlyer’s customer success team from scratch, how he set the key metrics, and how the team evolved to generate over $100 million in expansion revenue in the last 20 months for the company. Ziv also shared the three main things he looked for when hiring a new customer success manager at the start, why Annual Recurring Revenue churn is the most critical metric for a Customer S...
Feb 26, 2020•43 min•Ep. 50
Today on Churn.fm, we have Huw Slater, the Chief Financial Officer at Travelperk! In today's episode, we discussed the importance of looking at cohorts when measuring retention, how Huw goes about measuring a customers' lifetime value, and whether or not word of mouth can be measured. We also talked about the concept of a "growth ceiling" and how Huw evaluates opportunities that drive growth to allocate capital to. As usual, I'm excited to hear what you think of this episode, and if you have any...
Feb 19, 2020•40 min•Ep. 49
Today on Churn.fm, we have Aazar Shad, Head of Growth at User Pilot! In today's episode, we discussed how Aazar realized User Pilot had a churn issue as they were rapidly growing, the signals he uses to identify churn risk, and how he went about building the customer success team from nothing. We also dived deep into the power of visualizing progress in the onboarding phase and how transparency can be a tool to keep your customers engaged. As usual, I'm excited to hear what you think of this epi...
Feb 12, 2020•46 min•Ep. 48
Today on Churn.fm, we have Arundhati Balachandran, Director of Customer Sucess at Chargebee. In today's episode, we discussed about the role of Chargebee's customer success team in enabling expansion revenue, the specialization within the team, and the importance of cross-team collaboration in fighting churn. We also dived deep into how data plays a role in deciding customer touchpoints, the customer onboarding process within Chargebee, and Arundhati's one piece of advice for any company battlin...
Feb 05, 2020•31 min•Ep. 47
Today on the Churn.fm, we have Yuval Keshtcher, the founder of UX Writing Hub. In today's episode, we talked about the art and science of UX writing, and how it can be a game-changer when it comes to improving conversion, reducing churn and increasing revenue. Yuval also shared how companies can use metaphors to maintain copywriting consistency, his step by step process in helping companies enhance their copy, and a real-life case study of a previous client of his. Lastly, we also talked about h...
Jan 29, 2020•45 min•Ep. 46
Today on the Churn.fm, we have Chris Savage, the CEO and Co-founder of Wistia! In today's episode, we talked about how having a creative brand can help retain loyal customers, how churn and retention have changed in Wistia over the years, and why qualitative data is irreplaceable. Chris also shared the story of why he and his co-founder decided to take on $17M in debt, things he wished he realized earlier in regards to churn, and the ownership of churn metrics within Wistia. We also talked about...
Jan 22, 2020•42 min•Ep. 45
Today on Churn.fm we have Emeric Ernoult, CEO and Founder of Agorapulse. In this episode, we talked about the role of communities in customer retention and using social media as a channel for customer support. Emeric also shared his learnings about churn and retention in his entrepreneurial career. He dived deep into his past churn metrics, future goals, and how he plans to further tackle churn at Agorapulse. We also talked about how to design your product roadmap based on customer feedback, and...
Jan 15, 2020•46 min•Ep. 44
Today on Churn.fm we have Bob Moore, serial entrepreneur and the co-founder and CEO of Crossbeam, a platform that helps companies find overlapping customers and prospects while keeping the rest of their data private and secure. Bob was also the founder of RJ Metrics and Stitch, two data analytics startups that got acquired by Magento and Talend respectively. In this episode, Bob shared his experience on how his company’s churn rate affected their acquisition value, how partnerships can be a powe...
Jan 08, 2020•43 min•Ep. 43
I wish you a happy new year, and hope you are having a great start of the year! Today on Churn.fm, we have Casey Graham, CEO and Founder of Gravy, a subscription payment recovery service that helps companies fight involuntary churn. We talked about how Casey's experience with bad customer churn inspired him to start Gravy, the main reasons for failed payments in SaaS businesses, and why Casey thinks a hands-on, human approach is the best way to fight churn. We also dived into the different kinds...
Jan 01, 2020•45 min•Ep. 42
Today on Churn.fm, we have Carl Gold, Chief Data Scientist at Zuora, and the author of the upcoming book, Fighting Churn with Data. We talked about why Carl decided to write a book about fighting churn with data, why small companies need to determine the correct metrics in their journey to fight churn effectively, and how you can find the right metrics inside your product. We also discussed why churn and retention should revolve around providing value, why using AI and machine learning to predic...
Dec 25, 2019•51 min•Ep. 41
Today on Churn .fm, we have Gen Furukawa, founder of Retainable and former VP of Marketing at Jungle Scout. In this episode, Gen shared how he previously dealt with churn and retention as the VP of Marketing at Jungle Scout, and how it affected the marketing metrics his team needed to track. We also talked about how to get buy-in and convince the leadership team to focus on reducing churn, who should own customer churn and retention within a company, and Gen's advice for a startup struggling wit...
Dec 18, 2019•38 min•Ep. 40
Today on the show, we have Megan McMullin, Outreach Lead at MeetEdgar. In this episode, we discussed in-depth how MeetEdgar uses office hours, webinars and educational content as a channel to talk to customers at scale, gather feedback, build a robust community, and ultimately improve retention. Megan also shares the exact formula MeetEdgar uses to measure the effectiveness of their efforts in reducing churn, how she passes the qualitative data collected to the product team, and how they use Fac...
Dec 11, 2019•44 min•Ep. 39
Today on Churn.fm, we have Marvin Liao, an experienced startup advisor, and Partner at 500 Startups, specializing in seed-stage investments. Marvin shared his thoughts on how churn and retention affect his investment decisions, how he helps early-stage startups identify their ideal customers, and why he thinks retention is super crucial for early-stage growth. We also talked about why you shouldn’t blindly follow benchmark metrics without enough context, areas that most startups get wrong when i...
Dec 04, 2019•32 min•Ep. 38
Today on the Churn.fm, we have Josh Garofalo, expert SaaS copywriter and Founder of Sway Copy. We talked about how Josh became a SaaS focused copywriter, his step-by-step process to create engaging copy, and his insights on why companies should focus on the one buyer segment that matters, and ignore the rest. We also discussed how to identify your most valuable buyer persona, understanding your customer’s awareness stages in their buying journey, and the interview techniques Josh utilizes to hel...
Nov 27, 2019•52 min•Ep. 37
Today on Churn.fm, we have Adam Dorrell, the CEO and Founder of CustomerGauge. In today's episode, we talked about the importance of Net Promoter Score or otherwise know as NPS, why it's more than just a metric, and how companies can implement NPS results into their workflow. We also discussed why customer feedback is an impactful growth lever, how to reach out to customers strategically, and how you can make feedback actionable. Adam also shared the one question that he hopes more businesses as...
Nov 20, 2019•38 min•Ep. 36
Today on Churn.fm, we have Corey Haines, Head of Growth at Baremetrics In this episode, we talked about the "dirty little secret" most companies have when it comes to their customer churn rate, what "dunning" is and why it’s important for any SaaS company to monitor it, and the most common reasons for delinquent churn. We also discussed how to collect honest feedback from churning customers, how to recruit the right interviewee for customer research, and how to figure out the most meaningful fee...
Nov 13, 2019•42 min•Ep. 35
Today on Churn.fm, we have Val Geisler, email marketing expert and CEO of Fix My Churn. We talked about why Val decided to found Fix My Churn, her approach to helping customers set up a communication strategy, and why onboarding emails are one of the most crucial parts in improving customer retention Val also shared her thoughts on why churn reduction is about doing things that don’t scale, how SaaS companies have started to concentrate more on customer retention, and why great email campaigns s...
Nov 06, 2019•45 min•Ep. 34
Today on Churn.FM, we have Hiten Shah, the founder and CEO of FYI, and other startups such as Kissmetrics, Crazy Egg, and Quick Sprout We talked about the biggest shift in the product development landscape over the years, why it's harder than ever to build and grow a business today, and why Hiten still launched FYI despite it all. We also talked about how Hiten categorizes customer retention into different buckets, why products should focus on targeting an already existing behavior instead of tr...
Oct 30, 2019•45 min•Ep. 33
Today on Churn.fm we have Emily Lonetto. Emily is the Head of Growth at Voiceflow In this episode, we talked about how Emily landed her role as Head of Growth at Voiceflow, Emily's experience in community building, and how she scaled the ambassador program at her previous job at Tilt. We also talked about why community is vital when it comes to churn and retention, things early-stage startups need to get right to start building a community and how to manage the community effectively. Emily also ...
Oct 23, 2019•47 min•Ep. 32
Today on Churn.fm, we have Brian LaFaille, Global Head of Customer Success Strategic Programs at Looker, and advisor at First Round Capital. In this episode, we talked about the importance of specializations within a customer success team, at what stage you should look into hiring team members with specific skills, and actionable steps to bring your success team onto a specialized path. We also discussed how customer success teams can start using data to decide their actions, why quantitative da...
Oct 16, 2019•45 min•Ep. 31
Today on Churn.fm, we have Ryan Singer, Head of Product Strategy at Basecamp and the author of Shape Up: Stop Running in Circles and Ship Work that Matters. In this episode, we talked about how Basecamp utilizes the Jobs-to-be-done framework to gather customer feedback, framing it from a supply and demand angle, and how it helps Basecamp's product team to decide on which problems to tackle first. We also discussed how Ryan goes about finding the right customers to interview, his interviewing met...
Oct 09, 2019•50 min•Ep. 30
Today on Churn.fm we have Nick Franklin, the CEO and Founder of ChartMogul In this episode, we talked about why Nick founded ChartMogul, the most important thing Nick learned about churn and retention, and why onboarding problem equals churn problem. We also talked about how companies use ChartMogul to track their churn and retention, unique ways Nick’s customers go about preventing churn, and the main customer metric ChartMogul always focuses on. Nick also shared his insights on why customer re...
Oct 02, 2019•48 min•Ep. 29
Today on Churn.fm we have Omid Razavi, Global Head of Product Success at ServiceNow. In this episode, we discussed the main difference between "customer success" and "product success", the 3 key aspects of the product success role, and how ServiceNow’s product success team handles and analyzes feedback to provide actionable insights for their product team. We also discussed the importance of understanding your customer's level of maturity, how to prevent churn when your champions goals are shift...
Sep 25, 2019•39 min•Ep. 28
Today on Churn.fm we have Jenny Campbell, Vice President of Customer Experience at DiscoverOrg. In this episode, we discussed the functions of customer marketing inside a customer success team; three essential things that move the customer retention needle; and how to define your customer segments. We also talked about DiscoverOrg's systematic approach when it comes to customer onboarding, how they continuously iterate the onboarding process, and how they measure the impact and effectiveness. Je...
Sep 18, 2019•52 min•Ep. 27
Today on Churn.FM we have Yu-Kai Chou, the author of Actionable Gamification and creator of the Octalysis framework. We talked about the 4 phases of a player’s journey in the gamification framework, and how it can help make your product stickier, and prevent churn. We also discussed examples of good gamification in SaaS, how much is too much, and how user onboarding can play a vital role in gamifying your retention. Yu-Kai also talked about the importance of community in user retention, the role...
Sep 11, 2019•48 min•Ep. 26
Today on Churn.fm we have Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius, and ex-founder and CEO of Convio. In this episode, we talk briefly about Vinay’s unique educational background, the biggest takeaway he got from being a student at three of the most prestigious universities in the world, and the moment he realized he was destined to become an entrepreneur. Vinay also shared how he prevents churn when a champion leaves his customer’s company, how he maintains retention by continuously educati...
Sep 04, 2019•49 min•Ep. 25
