Barriers to Churn

These days it seems like the only real barriers to churn -- i.e. leaving one product/service provider for another -- are artificially-imposed early termination fees (ETFs). It used to be really hard to move from one provider to another for a wide range of reasons including differentiated offerings, difficulty in transporting data/information, or even things like not being able to take a phone number with you.
Technology and regulations have made most of those things very easy to overcome. And, with more and more providers offering great incentives for new customers, the enticement to move is at an all-time high. The result, however, doesn't appear to be that providers are working really hard to convince you not to leave -- quite the contrary, they seem more interested in the next person they sign up than the one(s) they just did. And, the natural result is that they threaten you with fees if you leave before your contracted subscription with them matures.
Why not go the other way around? Why not focus on providing customers with what they want and expect from you -- and making sure your enterprise technology "stack" can help you deliver it effectively -- than imposing penalties so customers are afraid to or cannot afford to leave? Imagine building loyalty, providing great service, and effectively communicating with customers as the carrot that makes them want to stay with you, instead of the ETF stick that forces them to.

Customer Interaction vs. Customer Engagement

I recently heard this comment, and it really hit home: customers have all kinds of interactions with a company -- good, bad, indifferent -- but the real question is whether or not they are engaging and staying engaged.

That may seem obvious, but it's a point worth making in today's "customer interaction management"/"customer experience management" world: sure, you can interact with customers and they with you, and you can even get all sorts of analytics on those interactions to try to figure out what they are and aren't liking. But, until you engage them, all you're doing is piling up numbers and stats about your customers...and not building loyalty.

Today's customers have virtually unlimited options with regard to with whom they do business, and the "always on" nature of mobile communications and emerging business via social network efforts makes it far too easy for customers to find and switch from one provider to another. The way to make sure that doesn't happen with your existing customers and/or encourage more to come to you isn't just to make sure they can and do interact with you...it's making sure that every time they interact they are engaged.

Companies need to provide rich, consistent, and fully-functional touchpoints to customers in every communication channel. If a customer can do something on the web, they should be able to do it via IVR and other voice systems, via SMS, via an iPhone app, etc....and they shouldn't have to deal with different information and/or functionality being available in different channels as is far too often the case these days. That can be very difficult for a company to do without incurring tremendous price up front and/or every time something changes about what processes/services they are offering to their customers.

That means that companies need to look to supporting technologies that lower that cost of publication and cost per channel of communication. True customer engagement demands it, and companies will need to adapt, or they will lose customers and fail to attract new ones.