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ChurnZero’s Greatest Hits from 2019: Feat. Top 10 Blog Posts and Other Noteworthy News
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Along with one too many holiday parties, the year’s end brings reflections and roundups of the most popular trends from the past 365 days. For starters, Google released their Year in Search 2019 findings with our favorite fictional babies, Baby Yoda and Baby Shark, topping the “Babies” search category, ahead of the real-life Royal Baby who took the number three spot. That’s 2019 for you.
Feeling a bit nostalgic, we practiced our own self-reflection to create a curation of our proudest accomplishments this year. If ChurnZero were to release a greatest hits compilation of our top content, milestones, and life events in 2019, this blog post would be it. We hope you enjoy reading this best-of highlights reel; we loved making it happen.
With over 70+ published blogs this year, we whittled down our list to the ten most popular posts from the ChurnZero team and friends.
Top 10 Blog Posts from 2019
1.) How to Create a Great User Onboarding Experience That Leads to Product Adoption and Customer Success
It’s not surprising to see this post top our list since your churn rate is deeply connected to the quality of your customer’s onboarding journey. Read on to find out what onboarding phase is the most essential to adoption and how psychology’s “thin-slicing” phenomenon makes first-time user experiences a high-stakes encounter.
2.) 5 Common Mistakes Customer Success Managers Make When Managing Their Day
Do you mistake your busyness for productiveness? Is your daily must-do list becoming unmanageable due to scope creep from misaligned priorities? Is the onslaught of support tickets, emails, and customer complaints forcing you to live in a constant state of reaction? You’re not alone. Avoid these common productivity pitfalls by adopting habits to better delegate your energy and time.
3.) 5 Tips for Dealing with An Angry Customer (The Right Way!)
Mitigation starts with an acute self-awareness of your initial reaction to a customer’s concerns. Do you have enough empathy to know how your response is being received through your customer’s eyes? Follow these reparative steps to salvage your relationship with upset and frustrated customers before they’re damaged beyond repair.
4.) 6 Customer Retention Strategies That Keep Customers Coming Back
Nothing worth having in this life comes easy—including loyal customers. But earning customer loyalty is only hard when you don’t have an ongoing strategy to nurture your users into brand advocates. To keep your customers coming back for more, learn these affinity-building tactics including rewarding your VIPs and using surprise reciprocity.
This is an installment of our “Churn Monsters” (i.e. common churn risks your company faces) where we look at real-life scenarios involving churn monsters and how to defeat them.
When a customer ceases all communication without any explanation as to why they went silent, you’ve been ghosted. It can seem like an impossible feat to get ghosted customers to reengage with you since effective communication is a two-way street. Check out this life-like scenario to learn how to bring a ghosted customer back to life.
6.) CSM Confidential – Part 1: Difficult Customer Conversations
This was our first installment of CSM Confidential – where real-world CS practitioners give their unfiltered responses to some of the most challenging, frustrating, and cringeworthy CSM experiences. This relatable post covers how to handle when the customer is not always right (shocking!), tell a customer they’re a poor fit, and manage customers who ignores deadlines and meetings.
PS: In our second addition of CSM Confidential, we tackle how to deal with a difficult Account Executive, get budget buy-in, and respond to execs who don’t think CS is essential.
7.) 5 Misconceptions Customer Success Has About Product
It’s no secret that CS and Product teams have a bit of a love-hate relationship, and when it comes to communicating and working together things don’t always go smoothly. Read on for common misconceptions that CS folk have about Product folk, and why they’re wrong.
8.) 6 Things CSMs Need to Do Today to Blow Q4 Out of the Water
As you approach Q1 filled with new-year ambition, it’s the perfect time to turn your recent reflections into a sound strategy for the year ahead. This post focuses on how to maximize the biggest sales quarter and close out the year strong, but these same strategies can be applied to make every quarter in 2020 your best one yet.
9.) How Best to Create a B2B Customer Survey
CSAT and CES and NPS, oh my! There are many ways to build and score customer surveys, but to make them scalable and consistent, it’s crucial that you process the information in a quantitative way. Learn these B2B customer survey best practices to generate meaningful customer insights that don’t feel random and haphazard.
10.) Churn Monster: Championless
To round out our list, we have our final “Churn Monsters” installment featuring Championless.
This monster is unleashed when your product advocate or main point of contact leaves their role at the company—making their account’s likelihood of renewal wildly uncertain. This post features a life-like scenario of how to turn your advocate’s absence into an opportunity for a new champion (or should we say star) to be born.
And Other Noteworthy News
Now that you’ve read (or at least bookmarked) the best of our blog, if you enjoyed these posts, subscribe to our weekly newsletter to start your new year with the latest CS insights right in your inbox.
Lastly, I’d be remiss to not highlight our own retrospection of this past year’s achievements. But I know you’re busy with pressing matters such as deliberating last-minute NYE plans (to stay on the couch, or not to stay on the couch, that is the question), so I’ll make this short and sweet.
To sum up 2019 with one word: growth. ChurnZero raised $7 million in Series A funding led by Baird Capital. They say good things come in threes which takes no exception to us welcoming our new CCO, CMO, and VP of Sales to our powerhouse executive team. Building on our momentum, the team knew it was the perfect time to step up our CS event and networking game in a big way; so, we created BIG RYG—ChurnZero’s inaugural industry and user conference built for current and future CS leaders (save your spot). And on the security front, we reinforced our commitment to protecting customer data and earned our SOC 2 Type 2 Compliance. We also popped a few bottles to celebrate taking home several top designations this year. We’re honored to be recognized as:
- 2019 Top Rated Customer Success Software by TrustRadius
- The Momentum Leader in G2’s Summer and Fall 2019 Momentum Report for CS Software
- SIIA CoDiE Award Finalist
- Moxie Award Finalist in the Software Category
- 2019 SaaS Awards Program in the Best SaaS Product for Customer Services/CRM category
- Overall SaaS Category Winner in 2019 APPEALIE Awards
- Best Tech Startup Finalist in 2019 Timmy Awards
- Tech 100 Company and our Chief Customer Officer, Abby Hammer, was named a Tech 100 Executive by NVTC
2019 is almost a wrap. As you plot your course for the new year remember that, “In between goals there is a thing called life, that has to be lived and enjoyed.” It’s been a fun, wild ride and we’re grateful to be growing with you by our side. Stay tuned; our all-time greatest hits have yet to be made.
Happy New Year from ChurnZero!
Customer Success Around the Web
- Account Management vs Customer Success– Check out these four major differences between the two practices.
- Interview Tips: Landing the Customer Success Position– Follow these do’s and don’ts to make the process a little less intimidating and hopefully help you get the job offer you’re after.
- How to Host the Perfect Customer Meeting– Read these tips for the best way of interacting with your customers during meetings.