Business
In today’s episode of The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about how to stop your customers from churning during COVID-19. During a crisis like the COVID pandemic, it is to be expected that a lot of your customers will cancel their service with you. However, there are some things you can do to reduce the rate at which your customers cancel. In this episode, Steli and Hiten talk about why you should always be working hard to improve your retention, what you shouldn’t be doing during this crisis, what to do to stop churn in this crisis and much more. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:00 About the topic of today’s episode 00:27 Why this topic was chosen. 01:10 Why churn is to be expected. 01:24 Why you should always be working hard to improve your retention. 01:34 What you shouldn’t be doing during this crisis. 03:00 Why you shouldn’t be lazy about trying to stop churn. 03:21 What to do to stop churn in this crisis. 04:10 The importance of talking to your customers. 05:43 Some practical ideas to help you stop churn. 07:58 How people’s feeling has been changing over time. 3 Key Points: We have to expect that some amount of churn is unstoppable.You should always be working hard to improve your retention.You shouldn’t be lazy about trying to stop churn. [0:00:00] Steli Efti: Hey everybody, this is Steli Efti. [0:00:02] Hiten Shah: And this is Hiten Shah and today on the Startup Chat we're going to talk about this idea of having a sense of urgency in your business and instilling it across your business. The definition of this is basically people in the organization, you as an organization, thinking of urgency of execution, urgency as like a sort of either a framework, a mantra, a way of being, that I think is necessary in business and it's something that I strive towards in my own companies. And there's usually no better time than like when there's a pandemic or a crisis to really think through how you can have a greater sense of urgency because you're kind of forced to at this time. But how can you do that more regularly in your company, in your business, and why is it important? It's kind of like, I think what we can unpack. [0:00:58] Steli Efti: I love it. I just had to think, what a weird statement that's totally normal to be like, "There's no better time to think about urgency than during a pandemic." And it's like, "Yeah, of course this is [inaudible 00:01:12]." [0:01:12] Hiten Shah: Sounds about right, right? [0:01:13] Steli Efti: There's an old business saying that, thy shall move fast during a pandemic. I get it. [0:01:20] Hiten Shah: Yeah. I mean, come on. Okay, go on. [0:01:28] Steli Efti: So I'll challenge this, because this episode is actually inspired by our last episode around being a wartime CEO, and I think I know how to act with urgency during crisis. I had been told that I'm particularly effective when things are tough and- [0:01:49] Hiten Shah: You know why, right? [0:01:50] Steli Efti: Tell me. [0:01:51] Hiten Shah: You're steady, that's why. [0:01:53] Steli Efti: That is true. [0:01:54] Hiten Shah: You're steady. That's it. You're just steady, and when you're steady and everyone else might not be steady or needs that steadiness, you're there. That's just who you are. And I think that that's different. Different in the sense of like, that would be you being able to be calm under pressure. That would be my read on it. [0:02:19] Steli Efti: Yeah. So, so there's some truth to that. I think there's also something to be said that during a crisis, I know how to make decisions under fire and had creed clarity and execute, not freeze when there's uncertainty,