EPISODE 25 OF WHAT WOULD THEY DO? THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE PODCAST FOR SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS
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Join me as I answer the question: “How can I use the data I have available to me to keep my best customers?”
If you’ve ever been blindsided by a cancelled retainer, course dropout, or membership churn, this one’s for you. Join me as I walk through simple but powerful ways to identify early warning signs, set up automations, and take timely action before a client ghosts you or clicks “cancel.”
Whether you’re a service provider, course creator, or membership site owner, these customer retention strategies can help you step away from gut feelings and toward data-driven action.
Check out Convertbox here. (affiliate link)
What we cover:
What “At-Risk” Really Means – How to define and spot customers at risk of churning, across service, course, and membership models.
The Most Telling Churn Signals by Business Type – What behaviour shifts to look for in clients, students, and members before they ghost you.
Why Guessing Isn’t a Strategy – How to move away from gut feelings and toward measurable data patterns.
Simple Automations That Help You Step In Early – How to trigger personal check-ins, nudges, and re-engagement workflows before it’s too late.
Real Examples From Retention Lab & 1:1 Client Projects – How I use behaviour-based data and ConvertBox pop-ups to catch disengagement before it becomes a cancellation.
Soundbites:
“The definition comes down to tracking customer behaviour, having a really close look at the signals they’re sending you and using that as a way to predict churn. A lot of those signals can feel disjointed when you first start off, but over time your customer behaviour starts to follow similar patterns.”
“If you are a service provider with retainer clients or ongoing projects, I highly recommend setting a ’30 days silence’ automation that kicks into gear if a client hasn’t booked a follow-up call with you or hasn’t responded to your communication. And it could go along the lines of: “Hey Brian, I’ve noticed we haven’t caught up in a while. How’s everything going? What do you need from me to move this project forward?”
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Episode Transcript:
Hey, hey, and welcome back to another episode of the podcast. I’m super excited to have you here. I’m going to give you some action packed advice, bite sized and practical action steps that you can take today to become a more customer focused and customer centered business. Today’s question is all around
predicting customer churn. It goes like this: How can I use the data I have available to me to keep my best customers? Such an easy question on the surface, but there are so many seemingly easy steps that you can take to predict when someone is about to cancel their membership, about to cancel their retainer agreement with you, or is about to
become disgruntled because they feel like there’s a lack of support or something simply isn’t aligned. So today’s episode is all about giving you some simple analytics setups that can flag at risk customers before that moment that matters where they cancel their contract, they cancel their membership and they are never to be seen again. We’re going to look at what at risk in inverted commas really means.
And I’m going to leave you with three quick analytics setups for service providers, course creators and membership site owners that can make all the difference for you today. So what are we really talking about when we’re talking about at risk customers and at risk customer analytics?
The definition comes down to tracking customer behaviour, having a really close look at the signals they’re sending you and using that as a way to predict churn. So predict that they’re at risk of cancelling the contract, at risk of cancelling their membership, at risk of not completing their course because they feel a lack of support, etc.
A lot of those signals can feel disjointed when you first start off, but over time you usually are able to pick up a pattern where your customer behaviour starts to follow similar patterns. So for a membership, for example,
That could be at the four month mark where people are starting to engage less. They are taking less actions inside your membership and looking at those signals can be the key to preventing that cancellation. The core signals to watch out for.
I’ve broken them down into the different business types that I usually have in my audience. So I’m hoping you’re finding yourself in one of those audience groups. Let’s start with service providers. So for service providers with ongoing client projects or potentially retainer clients, it really pays to pay attention to increasing gaps between appointments, between calls that you usually have with
your client to make sure your workload is looked after for the coming months, you’re across projects that are coming up. It could also be a reduction in usual communication and updates that were very frequent to begin with. When it comes to course creators, obviously that depends on the type of course you’re offering, but usually it pays to pay attention to a drop of module completion rates. I know not every course platform allows you
visibility, but that can be a good indication. It could be show up rates to your monthly live Q &A session, for example, that they used to attend religiously, and it can also be email engagement. People stop opening emails in your onboarding sequence, in your nurture sequence, in the general monthly update.
And when it comes to membership site owners, it could be a decline in logins. So if people stop logging in, that obviously indicates they’re no longer making use of the features, which means they’re likely not seeing the benefit in the membership anymore. It could be again, a drop in email engagement. So they’re stopping to open your…
monthly membership updates, for example, your onboarding sequence emails, and it could be a reduction in other actions they take. So inside Retention Lab, for example, I encourage my members to submit their monthly execution for a chance to win a prize. So if someone stops submitting executions, for example,
they stop submitting their monthly critiques, if they’re incubators, that is a good indication that something isn’t right, something is not aligned and it’s worth checking in. So the goal when it comes to these signals and these behaviors is to step away from vague gut feelings where you are guessing when people are starting to churn, where you’re…
guessing when someone could be at risk of cancelling their contract to picking up those patterns and leveraging concrete data points and patterns in your email automations, in your nurture sequences, in your re-engagement sequences that kick into gear so you prevent that drop in engagement, for example, to happen. You want to anticipate
that churn and step in before the usual pattern tells you people start to drop off. It’s really important because obviously people who cancel are much harder to win back, right? We all know that retaining an existing customer costs five to 25 times less than acquiring a new one. So
it’s in your best interest to look after your existing customers, keep them engaged and keep them in your paying customer bucket. Early interventions also mean that, you can save that relationship and that brand perception from slipping. again, a re-engagement campaign and getting people on track is much easier to execute than getting on top of a win-back.
campaign, after a cancellation, getting people to resubscribe is much harder than preventing people from cancelling. Coming from a brand perspective here: as a brand for you to take extra steps and support those customers that clearly are missing something, they’re clearly missing support, communication, outcomes, whatever that might be, showing up
and being proactive about whatever problem they’re experiencing, whatever seems to be bothering them, shows that you genuinely care about your customers and it’s going to ultimately build deeper brand loyalty. Now we’re going to look at one action step that you can take today to try to predict that churn and
prevent it from happening in the first place. So let’s start with service providers. If you are a service provider with retainer clients or ongoing projects, I highly recommend setting a, 30 days silence automation that kicks into gear If a client hasn’t booked a follow-up call with you, hasn’t responded to your communication in 30 days.
whatever your checkpoints look like, I want you to kick in to gear and automation that triggers a personal check-in, whether that is a personal video, an email, whatever your preferred mode of communication is. And it could go along the lines of, hey, Brian, I’ve noticed we haven’t caught up in a while.
How’s everything going? What do need from me to move this project forward? This works and is super efficient because the client feels like you’re taking control of the project. You’re in charge, you’re stepping up to keep things on track. And it again shows that you’re interested in outcomes and you’re as invested in their success as they are.
When it comes to course creators, you can set up something like an engagement pulse in your email platform. Hopefully that connects with your learning platform. if not, you can potentially integrate it via Zapier, but something that tracks module completion rates, show up rates for your live components,
But again, have a look at a timeline that you set yourself, whether that is 30 days or 14 days. If someone hasn’t completed DRIP content, 14 days after it has DRIP, you can send them a targeted email with a little motivation, a mini task, something that keeps them on track and gives them what they need to take action. And it could look like
congrats on finishing module two. Let me know if you need a hand with module three. Here’s a quick tip to see you take action and get started with module three, something like that. if they haven’t shown up for a live call in a while you could also message them, we’ve missed you in our live calls, is there anything I can do
in the lead up to our next call to help you make it live. It just opens the path for them to actually come forward with feedback And it hopefully opens up that opportunity for you to give them a little helping hand, even if it’s a reminder that they can actually pre-submit questions for the live call if they can’t make it.
It is a matter of reminding them how they can get the best results and keeping them on track because ultimately, if someone signs up to a course, they sign up because they want results. And if you can facilitate those results, that means they’re going to be happy with the experience. They’re going to talk about your course to their community. And it just speeds up that word of mouth and hopefully gets you new clients.
Now let’s come to membership site owners. You could very similar here have a check on login frequency for example or activity frequency as I mentioned in Retention Lab. I pay attention to monthly submissions to quarterly audit submissions so I really flag anyone who
hasn’t submitted critiques or audit requests and then send a personalized message on Voxer for example or an email to find out how I can support them and what’s been happening in their world. You can also use Convert Boxes convert box is a tool that I use in my business. I’ll link it up in the show notes.
basically they’re little pop-up boxes that you can embed not only on your website, but also inside your course portal. I have embedded convert boxes inside my ThriveCart. I’m also currently working with a one-on-one client who has a very active membership and we are working on re-engagement convert boxes, again, based on behaviors, actions or lack of actions.
and other signals that usually indicate someone is at risk of cancelling their membership. So that’s another way to work with clever tech tools that you potentially already have in your business. And ConvertBox allows you to use certain tags in your email platform as a trigger. So if you can link your learning platform to your email platform, tag people if they haven’t been active for 30 days, that then can trigger inside your learning platform.
There are countless and limitless opportunities, but these are just scratching the surface here to give you an idea. Ultimately, anticipating that someone might not be feeling your membership, someone might potentially also not understand the features, means you can reach out to people before they cancel rather than having to add them to your win back sequence and hope that they rejoin in the future.
So before we wrap up because hashtag bite-sized, I just would love you to take this episode as another reminder how important it is to pay attention to your customers. They are sending you signals. If you pay close attention to your customers, you look out for patterns that allows you to anticipate
what you can do to over deliver and to surprise and delight. And it really isn’t rocket science. I mean, in a membership, people are always going to cancel at some point, right? Because hopefully they’ve achieved what they were after or sometimes life circumstances change, right? So a certain churn rate is totally normal, but you can absolutely reduce that churn rate if you keep people engaged, if you anticipate potential problems that they’re having.
So what I would love you to do from today’s episode is choose one behaviour metric that you can look out for in your systems, that your systems, whether it’s your email marketing platform, your membership portal, your learning platform gives you access to, whether that’s appointments, module completion, submissions, logins, and have a look how you can capture the
activity or lack of activity around that metric and then use that as a way to trigger an automation that checks in and opens that channel for communication. So if you have a burning customer experience question, just like the one I answered today, I would love you to submit your question via the link in the show notes. You can do that anonymously.
or leave your name and business details and I’ll give you a shout out on a future episode. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it with your business buddies, your friends, your connections, anyone really who can benefit from these bite-sized tips I’m sharing every week. Thanks for trusting the show and I’ll see you next week.
