How are you combating the increase in non-renewals of service contracts?

David Hartley

Are there new services or deliverables that you are offering to keep customers that are trying to reduce their spending.

Gavin O'Leary

Thanks @Lexi Provost

The paper and blog post linked are really well positioned to support the original question.

For me it's not so much of the new services and more on the (new) deliverables. Everybody in the current climate is trying to reduce their spend. The biggest challenge is not battling on budgets but rather the value. For the customer to recognize value, they have to be using your product. If they generate enough value then they will not try to reduce spend or reduce usage.

In my opinion the deliverables are the key. Or rather the Outcomes. Why did the customer originally purchase your product? What Business outcome are they trying to achieve? Have you delivered that promise to them?

As the deliverables start in the onboarding and nurturing campaign, that's where we start to deliver on the promise. Where possible we'd like to have CSM's that are fully engaged and focused on adoption, delivering QBR's to prove value. Here they can also offer adjustments throughout the contract ensuring you are delivering the promise to the customer. When mature and managing via the QBR, it's hard for the customer to say they are not receiving value for their investment and hopefully not try to reduce spend.

So with that said, if you are not running this way, this maybe a mid term goal. In the immediate, short term and low cost, I would recommend aligning where you receive the most support requests from customers and provide Focused Webinars for your customers to leverage. This would offer a 1:Many communication and close some gaps in usage/adoption and drive you further as a trusted advisor to your customers. This could be seen as a new service, free to your customers and based on the internal expertise you have but focused on the customer.

Hope this is helpful

Lexi Provost

Hi David! A paper by our VPs of Research, @Jack Johnson and @George Humphrey, titled Survival Guide for Renewing Recurring Revenue in the COVID-19 Economic Crisis, gives a really robust explanation of the implications of and alternatives to discounting in the current climate.

Our VP oF Service Revenue Generation Research, @Jodie Paxton, also published this blog post, It's Time to Double Down on Service Marketing to Mitigate Churn, which is helpful as well.

@Christopher Vasquez and @Gavin O'Leary, do you guys have any other insight into this?