What You Can Do to Reduce the “Churn” for Your Software Product

As you will soon discover, the job is far from done when an individual or company takes out a subscription to your software. They could cancel during their free trial, which means you have made nothing, or shortly afterward, which is not much better. 

Your product and your business will only survive by having long-term paying customers and not a continual “churn” of new customers who come and go very quickly. While having long-term customers is the ideal scenario, it is not easily achievable, so you need to employ some specialist tactics to make sure those cancellations stay at a minimum.

Therefore, here is a guide on how to attract and retain customers for your software product.

Make regular improvements

The needs of customers and the world of technology in general are always evolving, and therefore you need to ensure your product evolves with you. One of the reasons why customers are terminating their subscription might be that they feel your software is out of date or that their needs have outstripped what you can supply. To avoid this, you need to be constantly looking for ways to improve your product and add extra features to make the customers’ lives easier.

One possible way of doing this is to continually be looking at customer feedback and addressing their concerns. You might lose a customer due to an issue, but if you fix that problem, it might be the only one you do lose for that reason. You should make these changes a priority; if one customer is experiencing difficulty, then the chances are they are not alone.

Use a digital adoption platform

Another issue that means that customers cancel their subscription either within the free trial period or shortly afterward is that they have trouble getting to grips with your software. No matter how much you invest in UX, you are going to have those who need to ask questions and want answers quickly. Of course, they can put a support request in, but ideally, they want their problem solved at the point of need.

By creating training content for a digital adoption platform such as Intellek Deliver (DAP), your customers will have the answers they need on tap and this will alleviate the frustrations of not knowing what they are doing. As soon as your customers can start to use your software to solve problems, the more likely they are to stick with it.

Ensure the sales copy is congruent with your product

You should also look at the web pages you are using to sell your software to customers. One reason why users might cancel your product is that the sales copy gives them an inaccurate picture of what to expect, so they leave because they feel disappointed. You should take a look through every word to make sure that, as far as possible, it gives a correct view of what users can achieve using your product and, just as importantly, a realistic timescale of when it can be achieved.

Increase the trial period 

Users expect some sort of trial period whenever they purchase your software, with 30 days being the norm—regardless of what is being sold. For some products, however, this might not be enough, and some users might cancel because they feel rushed into making a decision and therefore err on the side of caution. 

If you can build a long-term relationship with a customer, they could be with you for years, so tagging an extra 30 or even 60 days at the end of your current trial period might be what you need so they can make sure your product is right for them. This can also make you stand out from the crowd if the competition is still sticking to the same old 30 days.

To wrap everything up

You can put time, money, and effort into pouring customers into your sales funnel, only for them to cancel their service during the free trial or shortly afterward. Some customers will only be after a freebie and quit anyway, but if you take the right steps, most others will stay for the long term.

It starts with making sure your product is updated with new features regularly and that it satisfies all of the claims you make in your sales literature. You also need to make sure that you can get answers to any queries fixed quickly so that they can get used to using what you have to offer. This might involve a longer trial period than you currently offer, so consider adjusting that so users can feel at home and are more likely to stick with you than look elsewhere.