Introduction to the Renewal Flow

Speaker 1 0:23

Today , another solo episode for you where we're taking it back to basics and looking inside a renewal flow . Once again , welcome to the Digital Customer Experience Podcast with me , alex Turkovich , so glad you could join us here today and every week as we explore how digital can help enhance the customer and employee experience . My goal is to share what my guests and I have learned over the years so that you can get the insights that you need to evolve your own digital programs . If you'd like more info , need to get in touch or sign up for the weekly companion newsletter that has additional articles and resources in it . Go to digitalcustomersuccesscom . For now , let's get started . Hello , and welcome back to the Digital CX Podcast , the show where we talk about all things digital in CX . This is episode 93 .

Speaker 1 1:09

Got another solo episode lined up for you today and for those of you who I saw at the Customer Success Summit in Austin a couple weeks ago now , I hope you had a great event . I thought it was a great event Lots of great speakers , lots of great topics , lots of great networking . So it was nice seeing some of you out there and there was obviously a lot of artificial intelligence talk , lots of great speakers on that particular topic . I talked about the four pillars of customer success , which we've covered at length on this show and on the website and other places , but overall it was a really good event . I thought one interesting thing that I noticed and actually was a direct comparison between last year's event and this year's event , because I asked the same fundamental question in both years . The

Insights from the Customer Success Summit

Speaker 1 2:12

question was how many of you in attendance are using chat , gpt and artificial intelligence on a daily basis intelligence on a daily basis and a year ago , I'm going to guess , 30% of the room raised their hand when I asked that question . Versus this year , almost everybody did . I would say 90% did , which I think is a good thing . Right , it's a fundamental shift in ways of working and obviously there's varying degrees to which you are using artificial intelligence in your day-to-day basis . But I think for most of us , popping open chat , gpt or perplexity ask a question or to get some guidance on something has become a norm , and I think that's super , super cool and it represents us , you know , adopting new technology . So pat yourself on the back if you're one of those people who also uses artificial intelligence on a daily basis .

Speaker 1 3:12

Last week I was on a couple of episodes of the Daily Stand-Up , which is Dylan Young , jp Frost and Rob Zambito's daily CS podcast , where there's a different topic covered in 15-minute increments , just depending on who wants to come on the show . Our conversation ended up going over and talking over the course of two different episodes . I'll link those in the show notes if you want to go listen to those , but one of the things that I brought up to the show was this thing that I've been experiencing where people are way overcomplicating digital and overthinking digital , and I'll let you go listen to the shows because we got into some really , really great philosophical conversations about you know what is digital , what should be digital . The show was that digital tends to be , yes , this kind of black box thing for a lot of folks . However , it is also started to become this overcomplication , if you will , and we see that in the number of tools we have available to us . We see that in the different strategies and things like that that people are implementing as part of their digital strategy . But , fundamentally speaking , I think we've lost sight a little bit of the human element and we've lost sight of the customer element specifically , because ,

Overcomplicating Digital Strategies

Speaker 1 5:04

ultimately , your digital strategy should really just inform how you're engaging your customer , based on where they want to be engaged and where you can find them most easily . A lot of times , what I see people doing when they're adopting digital and trying to implement digital is they're making some pretty wild assumptions . They're making some pretty wild assumptions in terms of what they feel like is going to be effective or not .

Speaker 1 5:33

A couple episodes ago , I talked a little bit about this notion of you know , automate only after you've done something manually first , and I really try to stick to that as much as possible , because if you're doing something manually , it means that you will have a good understanding of what works , what doesn't work , and you won't be automating junk right . That said , I do feel like there is a lot of overcomplication that goes into things , feel like there is a lot of overcomplication that goes into things , into digital , and ultimately , digital needs to support the human . Whether the human is the customer , or whether the human is the customer success manager or an ops person , your digital motion should support those things that the human is doing , not interfere with those things that a human is doing , and sometimes bloated automations can actually cause more workload , and so I am a strong proponent of you know , when you're in the middle of designing these things , hit the pause button for a second and really analyze what the human implication of these things are . I think there's a nuance here that your digital automations should support humans . In other words , you can get your humans involved , but they need to be involved at the right time where they can actually add value . They shouldn't be involved to support the automation , and I see that a lot . I see that a lot where somebody goes and builds an automation but maybe a tool can't quite do this cool thing that they want them to do , and so you interject human inputs into the automation to support the automation , and I think that's completely , completely backwards . Um , I , you know I'm guilty of that too , like I've , I've built some stuff that requires some human inputs for the automation to work , and while net net you're probably still benefiting from that , you know part of me is like why even do it if your humans have to support the automation versus the automation supporting the human ? So in that spirit , I wanted to quickly talk you through and kind of show my work a little bit in my current role at Belfry Software .

Speaker 1 7:56

One of the things that we have recently done is retooled the renewal flow a little bit , or the pre-renewal flow , I should say , and I figured I would take you inside a little bit and just talk through the process we went through , to talk through that renewal flow and what that renewal flow should look like . That renewal flow and what that renewal flow should look like , and the process of putting it in the system and getting it live , and then also what I'm thinking about in terms of next steps , because the other thing about digital automation is that you're never really done right . Even though you have it in place , you're going to want to review it every once in a while to make sure it's still relevant and still doing what you need it to do . As you get more sophisticated , you're going to want to add to it and you're going to want to make it even more effective and allow it to reach your customer where they are Okay . So all this came about . As a lot of you know , I started a new gig in November of last year , so it's been three , four months or so , and one of the things that we wanted to do is just tackle some of the basics first , and so we looked at the renewal flow or the pre-renewal flow as being one of the things to tackle Some fundamentals about the business and I'm not giving away any trade secrets here , so it's completely fine here .

Speaker 1 9:24

Our contracts work on an auto-renewal basis and our customers have to give us a 60-day notice of churn before the contract end date . So we have a couple of dates here to work with , right , we have obviously the renewal date , we have the 60 day prior to renewal date and then that kind of drove , our decision as to when to start the renewal flow , which is essentially 2x . So we're starting the renewal flow at 120 days prior to the renewal . Now you may think that that is somewhat excessive and I think for some businesses it might be excessive . For some businesses , especially if you're in the practice of doing multi-year contracts , that's probably too short . But ultimately we felt that that extra 60-day window was enough to proactively engage our customers , uncover if there were any issues that would lead them towards a churn event and whatnot , and also , just given kind of like the operational cadence of our customers , it kind of makes sense , right .

Speaker 1 10:38

So we had

Designing an Effective Renewal Flow

Speaker 1 12:15

essentially toyed with a couple of different flows that were already in place . So one of the tools that we are using primarily on the sales side is outreach . So we had a couple of campaigns built in outreach that were doing a combination of emails and auto dialers , and you know that's cool , but also it's it's yet another tool and it's actually kind of an expensive tool . So we are heavy Vitaly users and so my I had , you know , very kind of selfish reasons for , you know , trying to move the renewal flow into Vitaly , keeping some of the good elements of what we had built in outreach but then adding to it as well and vitally . And that's precisely what we did .

Speaker 1 13:02

I had an onsite with the customer success managers shout out to Christina and Tajay for a few days , and one of the things we talked about was okay , what should this thing ideally look like ? What tone do we want to strike ? Um ? You know how do we want to engage our customers ? And out of those conversations came a um , a relatively , you know , simple flow um that we are implementing at the moment . That is basically a combination of automated emails as well as tasks for the customer success manager to engage via phone , so physically picking up the phone and calling . But I think the meeting element of this is very , very important .

Speaker 1 13:51

So if you're a CS leader and you're going through and you're designing these things . I highly recommend that you design them , not in a bubble of your own making . Pull your customer success managers in . Let's talk through what the renewal flow should look like . Let's talk about what the tone of voice should be like in those emails , what the tone of voice should be like in those emails you know . Really talk through that and give your CSMs some ownership around the development of that language , those emails , the cadence and those kinds of things . Because A , it means you don't have to , you know , do any enablement down the road on what the flow is , but B , it gives them a sense of ownership and it actually is , you know , represents them and represents a voice that they would like to have as part of these communications . So that's kind of top tip number one when you're designing these digital flows , renewal or otherwise .

Speaker 1 14:47

Pull your CSMs in or pull whoever it's going to affect in to the conversation in , or pull whoever it's going to affect in to the conversation . Make them a part of that conversation . So what we walked out with is essentially a weekly email cadence to our account owner what we call our account owner , which could be company leadership , could be a champion within the company . It is someone within that customer that we have identified as an account owner , and it is essentially a weekly email campaign that outlines a couple of different options . So option one is they can just coast through . Everything's cool , no need to engage , you're going to automatically renew Everything's hunky-dory . See you later . That's option one . It also gives them option two , which is a , you know , the offer of a strategic conversation . So if you , you know , if they want to engage with new terms or they , you know have , are anticipating a spike in employees or customers and those kinds of things , and they want to , you know , talk about terms and talk about the contract in general , it gives them the option to schedule that call specifically . And I would say , having done this a little while now , maybe 2025% of our customers take us up on an actual conversation about the renewal . Maybe a little bit more , but most are kind of like yep , this is great , let's , you know , let's go , and at that point we consider them , you know , renewed or we've gotten a verbal commitment from the customer that they are renewed . Super easy . Now , this is an .

Speaker 1 16:26

This is a weekly email flow . The first one is is , you know , quite , quite simple . It outlines those options . It says , hey , if you want to have a chat about it , here's my Calendly link . And we've built this email flow in vitally to where it is coming from their CSM . Their email signature includes their own Calendly invite , so it does seem like the email is actually coming from them , which I think is kind of digital 101 , obviously . So that's kind of a weekly cadence . They you know the way those emails go out is actually a reply to the thread . So if we don't hear back from the customer , the automation in seven days will just reply to the thread with a series of other emails as well that are slightly different in language but have the same kind of same kind of language . They do get increasingly kind of more urgent in their verbiage as that 60 day window approaches , for obvious reasons , right ? So you know , we want to make sure that our customers are absolutely , you know , aware of the fact that their contract is going to auto renew in 60 days .

Speaker 1 17:37

Now this automation goes together with a task that goes to the CSM to actually do some outreach to the customer and follow up on the email that was sent . You know , quite simple Give the account owner a quick call . Did you get my email ? Great , do you have any questions ? Some might say it's a little bit overkill and long-term . I don't really know how sustainable it is . But ultimately we made the strategic decision to use it as a really good time to engage your accounts , and so we're kind of throwing everything at it , both email automation as well as the human connection element of it .

Speaker 1 18:23

Now there are a couple of caveats here and ways of interrupting the flow , so to speak , where those emails won't go out , the flow , so to speak , where those emails won't go out . The first one is based on kind of an account status that the CSM sets . So we have something in our system called CSM Pulse . It's essentially a way for a customer success manager to describe the pulse of the customer , and if that pulse is set to poor in other words the customer ain't doing so hot , we actually are not going to distribute that renewal flow . I think it goes without saying . But we felt really strongly that if there is an escalation happening , if there's active conversations happening that denote really poor customer health , we felt it was obviously in poor taste to send out automated renewal emails that are relatively friendly in tone . So that is one kind of interruption method .

Speaker 1 19:25

Another interruption method for that flow is if a customer responds to the emails , it will actually stop the flow full stop , because we are having active conversations with that customer . We do not need to send the reminder emails and bombard them with things when we're already having those conversations . So we do this for about four or five weeks or so , that weekly cadence . If they don't respond at all , they will get all four or five emails right , increasing in urgency . And then what we do is , around the 67-day mark we will send essentially a final kind of warning if we haven't engaged with them , just saying hey , just so you know , you've got seven days till your renewal deadline . If we don't hear from you , you're going to auto-renew . And then there's kind of a more congratulatory note that goes out shortly after that renewal period or that 60-day mark that says , hey , you're all set for the renewal . Let me know if I can help in any way . Now I know what .

Speaker 1 20:27

Some of you are probably thinking that this is potentially a little bit overkill . And also I think there are probably some that would say well , why are you reminding them about this renewal deadline so vehemently ? Why wouldn't you just want it to pass and just kind of I'm not going to say sweep it under the rug , but why would you want to alert them so vehemently about the fact that they do have this option not to renew ? And you know , that did kind of cross my mind in the sense of , you know , adjusting the language to where it doesn't really talk about the option not to renew , it just it's , it's mainly just a reminder about the renewal itself . And if there were opportunities for uplift and opportunities for expansion and strategic engagement and those kinds of things , it doesn't explicitly say , hey , you know , do you need to churn ? Doesn't explicitly call that out right ? So I know some of you may think that is a little bit overkill to do that much communication around it .

Speaker 1 21:45

My take on it is that I would rather over-communicate than under-communicate the renewal aspect of things and I would rather really proactively try to engage the customer versus just being reactive when something goes wrong . Because in my book there's nothing worse than actually not hearing from customers . Not having customers actively engaged with your brand and your support and your CSMs is dangerous period Like if you don't know what's going on . That's

Navigating Customer Engagement Strategies

Speaker 1 22:18

not a great sign . It scares me so . So that's a little bit about that .

Speaker 1 22:23

I didn't . I didn't feel like it was relevant to specifically read the copy of the email . If you're curious about the copy of the email , let me know , ping me on LinkedIn or ping me via email , alexdigitalcustomersuccesscom , and I'll gladly send you some verbiage there that we're using . But I didn't feel like it was necessary because , I mean , we all have our different ways . The way that I express certain things and the way that my team expresses certain things may be completely different than the way you wish to do it , so I figured that was slightly irrelevant . But if I'm wrong , let me know , call me out on it .

Speaker 1 23:01

The thing that I do not like about the renewal flow is that it is very email heavy . Right now we are in the process of getting a lot of in-app stuff in place , including chatbots and those kinds of things , and so once that is in place , we will probably shift a lot of that notification over to in-app . I'm also toying with what does SMS look like in that flow , because a lot of our customers prefer SMS . They prefer getting text messages versus emails because they live on their phones right Now . I know that has its own set of issues and I know that with SMS you have to . You know you have to do opt-ins and you have to do all that . My take on this is that you know you implement as many different vehicles as possible that are interconnected so that your customer can choose how they want those notifications . If they live in email and they would rather have email , I will gladly send you those renewal notices via email . However , if you want them via text message , I will gladly send them there , and I think it's important to give your customers that choice . Right now it's kind of one channel for us , but in the not so distant future I fully anticipate us being able to give our account owners the option of whether they would receive SMS like to receive SMS notifications versus email , versus in-app , maybe even snail mail , right ? So we're toying with some options around that , especially around thank you cards .

Speaker 1 24:42

As you know , a few episodes back I had David Wax from Handywritten on the show . If you haven't listened to that episode , I highly recommend it . Handywritten is essentially a service where you can automate handwritten notes to be sent out to your customers , and so when our customers graduate onboarding and when our customers renew , I want to be able to implement a flow there that sends them automated . Thank you notes on the back of that . So , anyway , the whole point of this conversation around renewal flow is because I feel like there is a need for us to get back to basics , and I also feel like there is a need for all of us to show our work when we're doing these kinds of things , and so this is me showing my work and talking about a little bit . I'd like to do a lot more of that , because we are in the throes of building out an infrastructure around CX right now that takes a lot of these things into account , and so I plan to talk a lot more about that in the future on this show , but for right now I'll leave it there .

Speaker 1 26:00

Last year or so has been to make sure that you know , if you're listening to the show , I always like to tell my guests that I like to have the listener write one or two or three or four or five things down on their notebook that they can go implement in their own program . And so a bit of a plea to you if you are actively working on a digital program , if you are actively getting automations in place , building a program around something that was done manually . If you are in the weeds building this stuff , implementing and testing and A-B testing and all that fun stuff , I want to hear from you because I would love to start incorporating some of your real world examples onto this show . I don't really know what that's going to look like right now , but I think perhaps for every solo episode I might like to have one or two people come on for like five minutes and talk about what it is they're building and share some of their work , because I really like for the show to be a little bit more about you know the community and people showing their work , because I really like for the show to be a little bit more about you know the community and people showing their work . So if you've got something exciting that you're working on that you are excited about , that you want to share with the audience , please reach out to me either via LinkedIn or Alex at digital customer successcom . We'd love to hear from you and let me know what you're building . Super excited to hear from you .

Speaker 1 27:27

So that's all from me for now . I hope that you're having a wonderful week and I hope this has been a little bit helpful . More interviews coming in the next few days , plus another solo episode coming real soon , so stay tuned for that . For now , have a great day . Thank you for joining me for this episode of the Digital CX Podcast . If you like what we're doing , consider leaving us a review on your podcast platform of choice . If you're watching on YouTube , leave a comment down below . It really helps us to grow and provide value to a broader audience and get more information about the show and some of the other things that we're doing at digitalcustomersuccesscom . I'm Alex Tergovich . Thanks so much for listening . We'll talk to you next week .