How to Improve User Experience to Decrease Churn

Steal this. It dropped churn by 14%. No tool. No tech. Just a one-page Google Doc. If you’re running a SaaS, this is the fastest win you’ll get all quarter. Here’s how it works: 1. Spot the real problem Sales was closing deals. But CS had zero context walking into onboarding. So the first month felt like guesswork. Lots of friction. Missed expectations. 2. Create a simple handoff doc We made a doc with three required sections: • Context → Why they bought. What they care about. Any deal nuances. • Success Signals → What an early win looks like. What was promised. Key metrics. • Risks → What might go wrong. Pressures. Red flags. That’s it. Every AE had to fill this out before a deal could be marked closed-won. 3. Make CS actually use it No passive docs. CS read it before kickoff. Used it to lead the convo and build trust faster. It went from cold handoffs to warm intros. 4. Hold the line Early days were messy. AEs didn’t want to fill it out. CS didn’t want to review it. We made it non-negotiable. Reinforced it weekly. Once the habit stuck, the impact showed up fast: • 14% drop in churn • Onboarding time down • CS team less reactive • Customers happier sooner You don’t need a new playbook. Just a better pass between teams. Steal this. Use it today. No budget or buy-in required.

I’m not asking my CSMs to resolve support tickets. I’m asking them to leverage them. Support tickets aren’t just a backlog of problems; they’re customer truth bombs waiting to explode. If you’re not mining them for insights, you’re flying blind—and that’s exactly how churn sneaks up on you. Every Customer Success team I’ve ever led has been trained to use Support tickets strategically. Why? Because they’re packed with insights that make us better at our jobs. ✅ We learn more about the product. ✅ We spot trends before they become problems. ✅ We understand our customers’ use cases more deeply. If you’re not tapping into support data, here’s what you’re missing: 🔥 Emerging Pain Points Recurring issues expose friction in the customer journey. Ignore them, and those minor frustrations turn into churn-worthy headaches. 🔥 Product Gaps Customers vote with their tickets. If the same feature requests or usability complaints keep surfacing, your roadmap is practically writing itself. 🔥 Engagement Risks A spike in tickets isn’t just noise—it’s a flare. Users don’t submit tickets when they’re thriving; they do it when they’re stuck, frustrated, or in need of more enablement. Here are a few ways my team and I are using these insights: ✅ Spot & Engage Struggling Users A surge in ticket volume? Proactively reach out before frustration turns into a cancellation. ✅ Create Targeted Content If the same questions keep coming up, turn those insights into help docs, webinars, or office hours. ✅ Surface Expansion Opportunities Seeing frequent feature requests? Build them—or better yet, use them to tee up expansion conversations. ✅ Map Out User Behavior Support tickets tell you who’s onboarding, who’s adopting new features, and who’s stuck. Use that data to drive deeper engagement. ✅ Collaborate with Product Your product team needs this intel. Share support trends regularly to influence meaningful fixes and features. High ticket volume isn’t necessarily a bad thing—but you need to know how to use it to your advantage. Bottom line? CSMs don’t need to fix support tickets. But the best ones know how to use them to drive retention, expansion, and adoption. _____________________________ 📣 If you liked my post, you’ll love my newsletter. Every week I share learnings, advice and strategies from my experience going from CSM to CCO. Join 12k+ subscribers of The Journey and turn insights into action. Sign up on my profile.

I'm 99% sure you've deleted an app because it made you feel terrible. Think about it: → Habit trackers remind you of 0% progress → Femtech remind you of hormonal fluctuations → Fitness apps dictate how to feel about your weight → Activity trackers tell you you're not moving enough What happens next? You uninstall it [churn] You stop engaging with it [low retention] You shout about it online [negative reputation] It's a lose, lose for everyone The people using it suffer, and so does the business The truth is: We experience these situations ourselves. But, we deliver the same impacts to our users. People's contexts and emotions matter It's the difference between loving, or deleting the app For example: → Person A: I've made 0% progress, time to work! → Person B: 0% progress... I'm not good enough. We need to put people back at the heart of our services/ products Here's some things you can do: →  Research. Understand people's goals and contexts →  Think about how people's situation could change →  Understand the reasons why people might leave →  Tailor messaging for usage, activity and goals →  Give user's control - don't decide for them →  Map the unhappy paths and "edge-cases" →  Think about how people could be feeling →  Identify where your assumptions are →  Obsess over the words you use There's no shortcut; it's about understanding people At every step ask. How could people be impacted? Intentionally or unintentionally Positively or negatively If you can think it, chances are, people will experience it So, if we want to increase retention, reduce churn, create brand loyalty and generally deliver good products/services, we need to consider; experiences Design for people, always 💛 --- PS Sometimes people's circumstances mean they have to leave, not because they want to. Stay tuned for a post on offboarding!

Are you seeing your customer delight shrinking as your business grows? 🤔 Here's a hard truth most business owners don’t like to hear: The bigger your company gets, the harder it becomes to deliver that extra-mile service. You know, the one that made customers rave about you in the first place. And yet, this is the most perfect time to double down on delight! 🚀 📢 So why is this important now? As you scale, processes naturally become streamlined, and in the race for efficiency, the human touch often gets lost. Suddenly, what was once personal feels generic, and loyal customers begin to feel like just another number. In a world where customer expectations are constantly evolving, growth doesn’t mean you can afford to drop the ball on delight. Ignore this, and you’re left with dissatisfied customers, higher churn rates, and an all-too-common fate—losing the very customers that built your success. There is a method to delivering customer delight at scale. Here are five elements from that method for you to implement: 1️⃣ Create "Micro-Moments" That Matter: Whether it’s a personalized thank-you message or remembering a customer’s previous preferences, these small, thoughtful gestures scale surprisingly well. Make each interaction count. 2️⃣ Empower Your Frontline Teams: The best customer experiences are delivered by teams who feel empowered to solve problems without red tape. Give them the autonomy to delight customers without needing approval every step of the way. 3️⃣ Use Technology to Enhance, Not Replace, Human Connection: Invest in tools that help your team get smarter about customer preferences but don’t rely on automation alone. Customers can feel when the personal touch is gone. 4️⃣ Stay Nimble with Feedback: As you scale, the feedback loop becomes more important, not less. Build processes that ensure you’re continually learning from your customers, and be ready to pivot quickly based on that feedback. 5️⃣ Measure What Really Matters—Customer Happiness: Metrics like revenue and efficiency are important, but they’re not the whole picture. Make customer delight a key performance indicator in your growth strategy, and hold teams accountable to it. Long story short - TL; DR👇 You don’t have to choose between growth and delight. The two can and should go hand-in-hand if you want to create fans, not just customers. But the magic happens when you’re intentional about scaling those personal touches that set you apart in the first place. P.S. So, here’s my challenge to you: What ONE thing can you start doing TODAY to reintroduce delight into your customer experience as you scale? Drop it in the comments or send me a message. Let’s talk about how you can keep delight alive, no matter how big you grow. #CustomerExperience #CX #CustomerCentricity #BusinessGrowth #Leadership #VinayPushpakaran

Most CS leaders aren’t fixing churn—they’re just slowing it down. Every day, your inbox fills with escalations. Churn keeps coming. The firefighting never stops. But here’s the problem: While we hustle to put out fires, we often ignore the deeper, systemic issues that—if fixed—can change everything. I learned this lesson the hard way. A few years ago, my team was drowning in churn issues. Every week, we: ✅ Forecasted renewals for the next 3 months ✅ Battled through risk with aggressive renewal offers ✅ Tried patching the leaks by upselling other customers Same drill, over and over. Same results—nothing changed. Then, one conversation with a mentor shifted my entire perspective. He said: 💡 Keep your eye on the climate, not the weather. 💡 Customers weren’t leaving because of pricing. They were leaving because they weren’t getting value. When I dug deeper, the real issue wasn’t renewals. It was broken onboarding and CSMs too busy to plug the gap. Obvious from a distance → Hidden in the chaos. So instead of scrambling to save accounts at the last minute, I rebuilt our onboarding from the ground up. ✅ Clear customer goals ✅ Bespoke success plans ✅ Key metrics to demonstrate success The result? 📉 30% drop in churn within six months 🚀 90% gross retention—the highest in company history I had to learn how to let go of the panic of the short-term plays and focus on the long-term strategy. I also had to educate my leadership team to inspire trust that this shift would yield better results. The 3 tools I always use now: 1️⃣ Diagnose the Root Cause A spike in churn? Looks like a renewal issue. But dig deeper... ❌ Are you losing bad-fit customers because your ideal customer profile (ICP) isn’t aligned across Sales, Marketing, and Product? ❌ Are customers leaving because key product features aren’t delivering value? Focus on fixing the root cause—not just the symptoms. 2️⃣ Invest in Long-Term Solutions Quick fixes—discounts, extra support calls—ease the pain. But they don’t solve systemic issues. Your team might need short-term tactics, but your focus should be on long-term value drivers. ➡️ Better onboarding ➡️ Customer education initiatives ➡️ Stronger feedback loops Move from reactive firefighting → to proactive growth. 3️⃣ Drive Sustainable Change CS isn’t a silo. If you want to evolve, collaboration is key. A colleague at HubSpot launched a CS Council—leaders from Sales, Marketing, Product, and Support working together on shared challenges. It was one of the most powerful collaboration spaces I’ve been in. ✅ Shared insights = Smarter decisions ✅ Smarter decisions = Lasting impact The takeaway? By shifting focus from daily weather to the broader climate, you unlock sustainable growth. 🔐 💌 Want more strategies like this? Join 14.5K+ professionals subscribed to Unconventional Growth [link in comments]. #CustomerSuccess #CSM #CustomerRetention #RevOps #Support

Last week we had our first churn 💔 It hurt, especially considering that Mailability.io is a SaaS bootstrapped company with no funding. After a few months of successfully winning and onboarding numerous clients, seeing revenue value from day 1, we saw a client walking away, for the very first time. Without even giving us a chance. We just completed the implementation, went live and started seeing the first $$$ coming in. The next day the phone rang. They said their team was too small to handle another solution, and so they left. After a few failing tryouts to get the client back, our first reaction was disappointment. A few hours later we've already agreed that we will turn this negative experience into a customer experience learning-opportunity goldmine. Since Thursday, we have had 4 debrief meetings. In these meetings we identified the reasons for this churn and suggested effective ways to handle them. And even though there's probably nothing anyone can do to reduce churn risk to 0, it was definitely a must have experience for us as a company. Here are 4 key learnings💡: 1. While ICP is crucial, champion attention is key (even after signing) 🏆 While this client fell perfectly within our ICP, we missed a crucial aspect during the sales process. We wanted to win this client so much that it blinded us from seeing that they just didn't have the attention span to invest their time and energy in a solution like ours at this time. Learning - identifying potential engagement issues early on, can save precious time later (which is our most important asset). 2. Knowledge gaps cause confusion 🤔 The client shared with us that they didn't fully understand critical areas of the solution during the sales process, which caused them to enter the onboarding phase with technical knowledge gaps.  Action - added two additional slides to our sales decks. One explains how our solution works end-to-end. The second explains the onboarding process and the time required from the client during this phase. 3. Choose the communication channel that works best for your client 💬 We work with Slack to communicate with most of our clients, but in this case it didn't work smoothly. It took us a few days to realize that communication wasn't streamlined and moved to email. Learning - while suggesting your preferred communication channel, ask the client for their preferred channel of communication and follow their lead. 4. Clean and organized onboarding process with $ value from day 1 🤝 We've identified the weaker areas of our onboarding process and corrected them with clear objectives and action points.  - Added a few product recap slides to the onboarding deck to make sure everyone is aligned. - Added a clear timeline of required tasks, starting from high-impact / low time investment ones.  - Identified milestones requiring the client to review and confirm our setup, before launch. What have you learned from your churn experiences? Share in the comments!

"We just need a beautiful UI." The SaaS founder pushed a Dribbble screenshot across the table. "Can you make ours look like this?" I paused. Then asked him one question that changed everything: "Will beautiful screens stop your features from breaking?" He went quiet ↓ THE REAL PROBLEM: ↬ Their app wasn't ugly. ↬ It was broken. → Releases taking 5 weeks (planned for 2) → Every new feature broke old ones → Users leaving after one month → Devs buried in bug fixes But he thought a visual redesign would fix it. "Users will stay if it looks better, right?" Wrong. WHAT I SHOWED HIM: I pulled up their analytics: • 78% of churned users never mentioned design • Top complaint: "Things keep changing location" • Support tickets: "Where did [feature] go?" Users weren't leaving because it was ugly. They were leaving because it was unpredictable. Every release shuffled everything around. Nothing worked the same way twice. Pretty wasn't going to fix that. 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐂𝐇𝐎𝐈𝐂𝐄: I gave him two options: 𝐎𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐀: Redesign 6 months. Beautiful screens. Same problems. 𝐎𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐁: Build systems   3 weeks. Reusable modules. Problems solved. 𝐇𝐞 𝐩𝐢𝐜𝐤𝐞𝐝 𝐎𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐁. WHAT WE BUILT: Not prettier screens. Smarter systems. ✔ Global navigation Every feature lives in a predictable place ✔ Standard error messages Users always know what went wrong ✔ Modular onboarding One flow that works for every user type Not "beautiful." Just consistent. Reusable. Scalable. 8 WEEKS LATER: ⚡ Release cycle: 5 weeks → 12 days 📉 User churn: Down 41% 🎯 Dev focus: 80% on new features (was 30%) 💬 Support: "Things just work now" The founder called me: ✓ "I thought we needed to look like a unicorn. Turns out we just needed to work like one." 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐋𝐄𝐒𝐒𝐎𝐍: After 10 years, I've learned: ⤷ UI attracts attention. ⤷ Systems keep users. Beautiful screens get you the first click. Consistent systems get you the subscription renewal. Pretty makes users say "wow." Reliable makes users stay. 𝐘𝐎𝐔𝐑 𝐇𝐎𝐍𝐄𝐒𝐓 𝐂𝐇𝐄𝐂𝐊: What's your real problem? ❌ "Users don't think we look professional" ✅ "Users can't find things" ❌ "Our brand feels weak"   ✅ "Every release breaks something" ❌ "Competitors look better" ✅ "Our team ships slower every month" If your real problems are on the right? You don't need a redesign. You need a system. Choosing between beauty and velocity? Be honest: Are you chasing pretty or chasing working? #ProductDesign #SaaS #UXDesign #StartupGrowth #ProductDevelopment #DesignSystems

Reducing churn is critical for SaaS companies, yet many still struggle with effective cancellation flows. Why? Here's my take: CAC has risen 60% in the last 5 years, making customer retention more crucial than ever. And even with a great product, some users will inevitably consider canceling. But a well-designed cancellation flow can turn this into an opportunity. The best flows share key elements: They reinforce value before cancellation, highlighting benefits and unused features on the dashboard. They offer alternatives like pausing or downgrading. During cancellation, they personalize offers based on the user's reason and emphasize what they'll lose. Post-cancellation, top companies continue re-engagement through emails and dashboard offers. But optimizing the flow is just one piece. To truly reduce churn, companies must leverage cancellation data to improve the overall experience. Analyze drop-off points, common reasons, and user profiles. Use these insights to enhance your product long before users reach the cancellation stage. The key is balancing ease of cancellation with strategic retention efforts. Collect feedback, personalize offers, and continuously optimize based on data. So view cancellations as opportunities rather than losses – you'll reduce churn and maximize the value of your hard-earned customers.

I’ve spent a lot of time lately digging into churn at The Starters. My goal is to understand what separates brands who stay from those who don’t. Sign-up volume has always been consistent. But my question was: What actually drives long-term success on the platform? I expected to find issues with pricing or value. Instead, I found something much simpler. The brands who stick around all behaved the same way in their first week. → They posted a job immediately → They reached out to fewer Starters instead of spamming out 20+ messages → They kicked off a project within days Basically, our highest-retention users saw value fast. I call this perfect triangle of user behavior. The key to understanding retention on our platform. That insight completely changed how I think about onboarding, and we’re already rolling out changes to create that early momentum for every new user. We’re now actively guiding users early to help them: → Complete their profile → Post an opportunity right away → Book a call with me for advice on how to find the best matches This is great learning for any founder struggling with churn. Retention comes from building early momentum on your platform. Create it early, create it intentionally, and you’ll keep more of the customers you work so hard to acquire.