February 25, 2025 • 26 mins
In the spirit of showing our work - I figured I'd take this solo episode as an opportunity to walk you through a renewal flow I've been working on with the team! We also talk about my recent appearance on The Daily Standup where we talk about overcomplicating digital CS.
Lastly, I'd love for you to submit your own work for a mini show-and-tell where you come on to talk about the great things you're building!
Chapters:
00:00 - Intro
03:41 - Overcomplicating digital
05:18 - Digital automation should support the human, not the other way around
07:28 - Showing my work: Pre-renewal flow
12:10 - Design these flows WITH your teams - not in a bubble
13:05 - The renewal flow
18:34 - Is it overkill?
21:10 - What I don’t like about the flow - future expansion
22:05 - Let your customers choose how they want to be communicated with
24:00 - Submit your own work for the show ! Alex@digitalcustomersuccess.com
Enjoy! I know I sure did...
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Today, another solo episode for you where we're
taking it back to basics andlooking inside a renewal flow.
Once again, welcome to theDigital Customer Experience
Podcast with me, alex Turkovich,so glad you could join us here
today and every week as weexplore how digital can help
enhance the customer andemployee experience.
My goal is to share what myguests and I have learned over
(00:25):
the years so that you can getthe insights that you need to
evolve your own digital programs.
If you'd like more info, needto get in touch or sign up for
the weekly companion newsletterthat has additional articles and
resources in it.
Go to digitalcustomersuccesscom.
For now, let's get started.
Hello, and welcome back to theDigital CX Podcast, the show
(00:45):
where we talk about all thingsdigital in CX.
This is episode 93.
Got another solo episode linedup for you today and for those
of you who I saw at the CustomerSuccess Summit in Austin a
couple weeks ago now, I hope youhad a great event.
I thought it was a great eventLots of great speakers, lots of
(01:05):
great topics, lots of greatnetworking.
So it was nice seeing some ofyou out there and there was
obviously a lot of artificialintelligence talk, lots of great
speakers on that particulartopic.
I talked about the four pillarsof customer success, which
(01:27):
we've covered at length on thisshow and on the website and
other places, but overall it wasa really good event.
I thought one interesting thingthat I noticed and actually was
a direct comparison betweenlast year's event and this
year's event, because I askedthe same fundamental question in
(01:51):
both years.
The question was how many ofyou in attendance are using chat
, gpt and artificialintelligence on a daily basis
intelligence on a daily basisand a year ago, I'm going to
guess, 30% of the room raisedtheir hand when I asked that
(02:12):
question.
Versus this year, almosteverybody did.
I would say 90% did, which Ithink is a good thing.
Right, it's a fundamental shiftin ways of working and
obviously there's varyingdegrees to which you are using
artificial intelligence in yourday-to-day basis.
But I think for most of us,popping open chat, gpt or
(02:34):
perplexity ask a question or toget some guidance on something
has become a norm, and I thinkthat's super, super cool and it
represents us, you know,adopting new technology.
So pat yourself on the back ifyou're one of those people who
also uses artificialintelligence on a daily basis.
Last week I was on a couple ofepisodes of the Daily Stand-Up,
(02:58):
which is Dylan Young, jp Frostand Rob Zambito's daily CS
podcast, where there's adifferent topic covered in
15-minute increments, justdepending on who wants to come
on the show.
Our conversation ended up goingover and talking over the
course of two different episodes.
(03:19):
I'll link those in the shownotes if you want to go listen
to those, but one of the thingsthat I brought up to the show
was this thing that I've beenexperiencing where people are
way overcomplicating digital andoverthinking digital, and I'll
(03:42):
let you go listen to the showsbecause we got into some really,
really great philosophicalconversations about you know
what is digital, what should bedigital.
The show was that digital tendsto be, yes, this kind of black
box thing for a lot of folks.
However, it is also started tobecome this overcomplication, if
(04:19):
you will, and we see that inthe number of tools we have
available to us.
We see that in the differentstrategies and things like that
that people are implementing aspart of their digital strategy.
But, fundamentally speaking, Ithink we've lost sight a little
bit of the human element andwe've lost sight of the customer
(04:41):
element specifically, because,ultimately, your digital
strategy should really justinform how you're engaging your
customer, based on where theywant to be engaged and where you
can find them most easily.
A lot of times, what I seepeople doing when they're
adopting digital and trying toimplement digital is they're
(05:04):
making some pretty wildassumptions.
They're making some pretty wildassumptions in terms of what
they feel like is going to beeffective or not.
A couple episodes ago, I talkeda little bit about this notion
of you know, automate only afteryou've done something manually
first, and I really try to stickto that as much as possible,
(05:28):
because if you're doingsomething manually, it means
that you will have a goodunderstanding of what works,
what doesn't work, and you won'tbe automating junk right.
That said, I do feel like thereis a lot of overcomplication
that goes into things, feel likethere is a lot of
overcomplication that goes intothings, into digital, and
ultimately, digital needs tosupport the human.
(05:54):
Whether the human is thecustomer, or whether the human
is the customer success manageror an ops person, your digital
motion should support thosethings that the human is doing,
not interfere with those thingsthat a human is doing, and
sometimes bloated automationscan actually cause more workload
, and so I am a strong proponentof you know, when you're in the
(06:16):
middle of designing thesethings, hit the pause button for
a second and really analyzewhat the human implication of
these things are.
I think there's a nuance herethat your digital automations
should support humans.
In other words, you can getyour humans involved, but they
(06:39):
need to be involved at the righttime where they can actually
add value.
They shouldn't be involved tosupport the automation, and I
see that a lot.
I see that a lot where somebodygoes and builds an automation
but maybe a tool can't quite dothis cool thing that they want
them to do, and so you interjecthuman inputs into the
automation to support theautomation, and I think that's
(07:01):
completely, completely backwards.
Um, I, you know I'm guilty ofthat too, like I've, I've built
some stuff that requires somehuman inputs for the automation
to work, and while net netyou're probably still benefiting
from that, you know part of meis like why even do it if your
humans have to support theautomation versus the automation
(07:23):
supporting the human?
So in that spirit, I wanted toquickly talk you through and
kind of show my work a littlebit in my current role at Belfry
Software.
One of the things that we haverecently done is retooled the
renewal flow a little bit, orthe pre-renewal flow, I should
(07:45):
say, and I figured I would takeyou inside a little bit and just
talk through the process wewent through, to talk through
that renewal flow and what thatrenewal flow should look like.
That renewal flow and what thatrenewal flow should look like,
and the process of putting it inthe system and getting it live,
(08:07):
and then also what I'm thinkingabout in terms of next steps,
because the other thing aboutdigital automation is that
you're never really done right.
Even though you have it inplace, you're going to want to
review it every once in a whileto make sure it's still relevant
and still doing what you needit to do.
As you get more sophisticated,you're going to want to add to
it and you're going to want tomake it even more effective and
(08:29):
allow it to reach your customerwhere they are Okay.
So all this came about.
As a lot of you know, I starteda new gig in November of last
year, so it's been three, fourmonths or so, and one of the
things that we wanted to do isjust tackle some of the basics
(08:49):
first, and so we looked at therenewal flow or the pre-renewal
flow as being one of the thingsto tackle Some fundamentals
about the business and I'm notgiving away any trade secrets
here, so it's completely finehere.
Our contracts work on anauto-renewal basis and our
(09:10):
customers have to give us a60-day notice of churn before
the contract end date.
So we have a couple of dateshere to work with, right, we
have obviously the renewal date,we have the 60 day prior to
renewal date and then that kindof drove, our decision as to
(09:32):
when to start the renewal flow,which is essentially 2x.
So we're starting the renewalflow at 120 days prior to the
renewal.
Now you may think that that issomewhat excessive and I think
for some businesses it might beexcessive.
For some businesses, especiallyif you're in the practice of
(09:52):
doing multi-year contracts,that's probably too short.
But ultimately we felt thatthat extra 60-day window was
enough to proactively engage ourcustomers, uncover if there
were any issues that would leadthem towards a churn event and
whatnot, and also, just givenkind of like the operational
(10:15):
cadence of our customers, itkind of makes sense, right.
So we had essentially toyed witha couple of different flows
that were already in place.
So one of the tools that we areusing primarily on the sales
side is outreach.
So we had a couple of campaignsbuilt in outreach that were
doing a combination of emailsand auto dialers, and you know
(10:42):
that's cool, but also it's it'syet another tool and it's
actually kind of an expensivetool.
So we are heavy Vitaly usersand so my I had, you know, very
kind of selfish reasons for, youknow, trying to move the
renewal flow into Vitaly,keeping some of the good
elements of what we had built inoutreach but then adding to it
(11:05):
as well and vitally.
And that's precisely what wedid.
I had an onsite with thecustomer success managers shout
out to Christina and Tajay for afew days, and one of the things
we talked about was okay, whatshould this thing ideally look
like?
What tone do we want to strike?
Um?
(11:26):
You know how do we want toengage our customers?
And out of those conversationscame a um, a relatively, you
know, simple flow um that we areimplementing at the moment.
That is basically a combinationof automated emails as well as
tasks for the customer successmanager to engage via phone, so
(11:50):
physically picking up the phoneand calling.
But I think the meeting elementof this is very, very important
.
So if you're a CS leader andyou're going through and you're
designing these things.
I highly recommend that youdesign them, not in a bubble of
your own making.
Pull your customer successmanagers in.
(12:12):
Let's talk through what therenewal flow should look like.
Let's talk about what the toneof voice should be like in those
emails, what the tone of voiceshould be like in those emails
you know.
Really talk through that andgive your CSMs some ownership
around the development of thatlanguage, those emails, the
cadence and those kinds ofthings.
Because A, it means you don'thave to, you know, do any
(12:35):
enablement down the road on whatthe flow is, but B, it gives
them a sense of ownership and itactually is, you know,
represents them and represents avoice that they would like to
have as part of thesecommunications.
So that's kind of top tipnumber one when you're designing
these digital flows, renewal orotherwise.
Pull your CSMs in or pullwhoever it's going to affect in
(13:00):
to the conversation in, or pullwhoever it's going to affect in
to the conversation.
Make them a part of thatconversation.
So what we walked out with isessentially a weekly email
cadence to our account ownerwhat we call our account owner,
which could be companyleadership, could be a champion
within the company.
It is someone within thatcustomer that we have identified
(13:22):
as an account owner, and it isessentially a weekly email
campaign that outlines a coupleof different options.
So option one is they can justcoast through.
Everything's cool, no need toengage, you're going to
automatically renew Everything'shunky-dory.
(13:42):
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 theywant to engage with new terms or
they, you know have, areanticipating a spike in
employees or customers and thosekinds of things, and they want
to, you know, talk about termsand talk about the contract in
(14:05):
general, it gives them theoption to schedule that call
specifically.
And I would say, having donethis a little while now, maybe
2025% of our customers take usup on an actual conversation
about the renewal.
Maybe a little bit more, butmost are kind of like yep, this
is great, let's, you know, let'sgo, and at that point we
(14:26):
consider them, you know, renewedor we've gotten a verbal
commitment from the customerthat they are renewed.
Super easy.
Now, this is an.
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 tohave a chat about it, here's my
(14:49):
Calendly link.
And we've built this email flowin vitally to where it is
coming from their CSM.
Their email signature includestheir own Calendly invite, so it
does seem like the email isactually coming from them, which
I think is kind of digital 101,obviously.
So that's kind of a weeklycadence.
(15:10):
They you know the way thoseemails go out is actually a
reply to the thread.
So if we don't hear back fromthe customer, the automation in
seven days will just reply tothe thread with a series of
other emails as well that areslightly different in language
but have the same kind of samekind of language.
They do get increasingly kindof more urgent in their verbiage
(15:32):
as that 60 day windowapproaches, for obvious reasons,
right?
So you know, we want to makesure that our customers are
absolutely, you know, aware ofthe fact that their contract is
going to auto renew in 60 days.
Now this automation goestogether with a task that goes
to the CSM to actually do someoutreach to the customer and
(15:57):
follow up on the email that wassent.
You know, quite simple Give theaccount owner a quick call.
Did you get my email?
Great, do you have anyquestions?
Some might say it's a littlebit overkill and long-term.
I don't really know howsustainable it is.
But ultimately we made thestrategic decision to use it as
(16:19):
a really good time to engageyour accounts, and so we're kind
of throwing everything at it,both email automation as well as
the human connection element ofit.
Now there are a couple ofcaveats here and ways of
interrupting the flow, so tospeak, where those emails won't
(16:39):
go out, the flow, so to speak,where those emails won't go out.
The first one is based on kindof an account status that the
CSM sets.
So we have something in oursystem called CSM Pulse.
It's essentially a way for acustomer success manager to
describe the pulse of thecustomer, and if that pulse is
set to poor in other words thecustomer ain't doing so hot, we
(17:04):
actually are not going todistribute that renewal flow.
I think it goes without saying.
But we felt really stronglythat if there is an escalation
happening, if there's activeconversations happening that
denote really poor customerhealth, we felt it was obviously
in poor taste to send outautomated renewal emails that
(17:27):
are relatively friendly in tone.
So that is one kind ofinterruption method.
Another interruption method forthat flow is if a customer
responds to the emails, it willactually stop the flow full stop
, because we are having activeconversations with that customer
.
We do not need to send thereminder emails and bombard them
(17:47):
with things when we're alreadyhaving those conversations.
So we do this for about four orfive weeks or so, that weekly
cadence.
If they don't respond at all,they will get all four or five
emails right, increasing inurgency.
And then what we do is, aroundthe 67-day mark we will send
(18:10):
essentially a final kind ofwarning if we haven't engaged
with them, just saying hey, justso 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 morecongratulatory note that goes
out shortly after that renewalperiod or that 60-day mark that
says, hey, you're all set forthe renewal.
(18:31):
Let me know if I can help inany way.
Now I know what.
Some of you are probablythinking that this is
potentially a little bitoverkill.
And also I think there areprobably some that would say
well, why are you reminding themabout this renewal deadline so
(18:52):
vehemently?
Why wouldn't you just want itto pass and just kind of I'm not
going to say sweep it under therug, but why would you want to
alert them so vehemently aboutthe fact that they do have this
option not to renew?
And you know, that did kind ofcross my mind in the sense of,
(19:15):
you know, adjusting the languageto where it doesn't really talk
about the option not to renew,it just it's, it's mainly just a
reminder about the renewalitself.
And if there were opportunitiesfor uplift and opportunities
for expansion and strategicengagement and those kinds of
things, it doesn't explicitlysay, hey, you know, do you need
(19:38):
to churn?
Doesn't explicitly call thatout right?
So I know some of you may thinkthat is a little bit overkill
to do that much communicationaround it.
My take on it is that I wouldrather over-communicate than
under-communicate the renewalaspect of things and I would
(20:00):
rather really proactively try toengage the customer versus just
being reactive when somethinggoes wrong.
Because in my book there'snothing worse than actually not
hearing from customers.
Not having customers activelyengaged with your brand and your
support and your CSMs isdangerous period Like if you
(20:23):
don't know what's going on.
That's not a great sign.
It scares me so.
So that's a little bit aboutthat.
I didn't.
I didn't feel like it wasrelevant to specifically read
the copy of the email.
If you're curious about thecopy of the email, let me know,
ping me on LinkedIn or ping mevia email,
(20:44):
alexdigitalcustomersuccesscom,and I'll gladly send you some
verbiage there that we're using.
But I didn't feel like it wasnecessary because, I mean, we
all have our different ways.
The way that I express certainthings and the way that my team
expresses certain things may becompletely different than the
way you wish to do it, so Ifigured that was slightly
(21:05):
irrelevant.
But if I'm wrong, let me know,call me out on it.
The thing that I do not likeabout the renewal flow is that
it is very email heavy.
Right now we are in the processof getting a lot of in-app
stuff in place, includingchatbots and those kinds of
(21:25):
things, and so once that is inplace, we will probably shift a
lot of that notification over toin-app.
I'm also toying with what doesSMS look like in that flow,
because a lot of our customersprefer SMS.
They prefer getting textmessages versus emails because
(21:47):
they live on their phones rightNow.
I know that has its own set ofissues and I know that with SMS
you have to.
You know you have to do opt-insand you have to do all that.
My take on this is that youknow you implement as many
different vehicles as possiblethat are interconnected so that
(22:08):
your customer can choose howthey want those notifications.
If they live in email and theywould rather have email, I will
gladly send you those renewalnotices via email.
However, if you want them viatext message, I will gladly send
them there, and I think it'simportant to give your customers
that choice.
Right now it's kind of onechannel for us, but in the not
(22:31):
so distant future I fullyanticipate us being able to give
our account owners the optionof whether they would receive
SMS like to receive SMSnotifications versus email,
versus in-app, maybe even snailmail, right?
So we're toying with someoptions around that, especially
around thank you cards.
As you know, a few episodes backI had David Wax from
(22:54):
Handywritten on the show.
If you haven't listened to thatepisode, I highly recommend it.
Handywritten is essentially aservice where you can automate
handwritten notes to be sent outto your customers, and so when
our customers graduateonboarding and when our
customers renew, I want to beable to implement a flow there
(23:14):
that sends them automated.
Thank you notes on the back ofthat.
So, anyway, the whole point ofthis conversation around renewal
flow is because I feel likethere is a need for us to get
back to basics, and I also feellike there is a need for all of
us to show our work when we'redoing these kinds of things, and
(23:35):
so this is me showing my workand talking about a little bit.
I'd like to do a lot more ofthat, because we are in the
throes of building out aninfrastructure around CX right
now that takes a lot of thesethings into account, and so I
plan to talk a lot more aboutthat in the future on this show,
but for right now I'll leave itthere.
(24:07):
Last year or so has been to makesure that you know, if you're
listening to the show, I alwayslike to tell my guests that I
like to have the listener writeone or two or three or four or
five things down on theirnotebook that they can go
implement in their own program.
And so a bit of a plea to youif you are actively working on a
(24:31):
digital program, if you areactively getting automations in
place, building a program aroundsomething that was done
manually.
If you are in the weedsbuilding this stuff,
implementing and testing and A-Btesting and all that fun stuff,
I want to hear from you becauseI would love to start
incorporating some of your realworld examples onto this show.
(24:54):
I don't really know what that'sgoing to look like right now,
but I think perhaps for everysolo episode I might like to
have one or two people come onfor like five minutes and talk
about what it is they'rebuilding and share some of their
work, because I really like forthe show to be a little bit
more about you know thecommunity and people showing
their work, because I reallylike for the show to be a little
bit more about you know thecommunity and people showing
(25:15):
their work.
So if you've got somethingexciting that you're working on
that you are excited about, thatyou want to share with the
audience, please reach out to meeither via LinkedIn or Alex at
digital customer successcom.
We'd love to hear from you andlet me know what you're building
.
Super excited to hear from you.
So that's all from me for now.
(25:36):
I hope that you're having awonderful week and I hope this
has been a little bit helpful.
More interviews coming in thenext few days, plus another solo
episode coming real soon, sostay tuned for that.
For now, have a great day.
Thank you for joining me forthis episode of the Digital CX
Podcast.
If you like what we're doing,consider leaving us a review on
(25:56):
your podcast platform of choice.
If you're watching on YouTube,leave a comment down below.
It really helps us to grow andprovide value to a broader
audience and get moreinformation about the show and
some of the other things thatwe're doing at
digitalcustomersuccesscom.
I'm Alex Tergovich.
Thanks so much for listening.
We'll talk to you next week.
Today, another solo episode for you where we're
taking it back to basics andlooking inside a renewal flow.
Once again, welcome to theDigital Customer Experience
Podcast with me, alex Turkovich,so glad you could join us here
today and every week as weexplore how digital can help
enhance the customer andemployee experience.
My goal is to share what myguests and I have learned over
(00:25):
the years so that you can getthe insights that you need to
evolve your own digital programs.
If you'd like more info, needto get in touch or sign up for
the weekly companion newsletterthat has additional articles and
resources in it.
Go to digitalcustomersuccesscom.
For now, let's get started.
Hello, and welcome back to theDigital CX Podcast, the show
(00:45):
where we talk about all thingsdigital in CX.
This is episode 93.
Got another solo episode linedup for you today and for those
of you who I saw at the CustomerSuccess Summit in Austin a
couple weeks ago now, I hope youhad a great event.
I thought it was a great eventLots of great speakers, lots of
(01:05):
great topics, lots of greatnetworking.
So it was nice seeing some ofyou out there and there was
obviously a lot of artificialintelligence talk, lots of great
speakers on that particulartopic.
I talked about the four pillarsof customer success, which
(01:27):
we've covered at length on thisshow and on the website and
other places, but overall it wasa really good event.
I thought one interesting thingthat I noticed and actually was
a direct comparison betweenlast year's event and this
year's event, because I askedthe same fundamental question in
(01:51):
both years.
The question was how many ofyou in attendance are using chat
, gpt and artificialintelligence on a daily basis
intelligence on a daily basisand a year ago, I'm going to
guess, 30% of the room raisedtheir hand when I asked that
(02:12):
question.
Versus this year, almosteverybody did.
I would say 90% did, which Ithink is a good thing.
Right, it's a fundamental shiftin ways of working and
obviously there's varyingdegrees to which you are using
artificial intelligence in yourday-to-day basis.
But I think for most of us,popping open chat, gpt or
(02:34):
perplexity ask a question or toget some guidance on something
has become a norm, and I thinkthat's super, super cool and it
represents us, you know,adopting new technology.
So pat yourself on the back ifyou're one of those people who
also uses artificialintelligence on a daily basis.
Last week I was on a couple ofepisodes of the Daily Stand-Up,
(02:58):
which is Dylan Young, jp Frostand Rob Zambito's daily CS
podcast, where there's adifferent topic covered in
15-minute increments, justdepending on who wants to come
on the show.
Our conversation ended up goingover and talking over the
course of two different episodes.
(03:19):
I'll link those in the shownotes if you want to go listen
to those, but one of the thingsthat I brought up to the show
was this thing that I've beenexperiencing where people are
way overcomplicating digital andoverthinking digital, and I'll
(03:42):
let you go listen to the showsbecause we got into some really,
really great philosophicalconversations about you know
what is digital, what should bedigital.
The show was that digital tendsto be, yes, this kind of black
box thing for a lot of folks.
However, it is also started tobecome this overcomplication, if
(04:19):
you will, and we see that inthe number of tools we have
available to us.
We see that in the differentstrategies and things like that
that people are implementing aspart of their digital strategy.
But, fundamentally speaking, Ithink we've lost sight a little
bit of the human element andwe've lost sight of the customer
(04:41):
element specifically, because,ultimately, your digital
strategy should really justinform how you're engaging your
customer, based on where theywant to be engaged and where you
can find them most easily.
A lot of times, what I seepeople doing when they're
adopting digital and trying toimplement digital is they're
(05:04):
making some pretty wildassumptions.
They're making some pretty wildassumptions in terms of what
they feel like is going to beeffective or not.
A couple episodes ago, I talkeda little bit about this notion
of you know, automate only afteryou've done something manually
first, and I really try to stickto that as much as possible,
(05:28):
because if you're doingsomething manually, it means
that you will have a goodunderstanding of what works,
what doesn't work, and you won'tbe automating junk right.
That said, I do feel like thereis a lot of overcomplication
that goes into things, feel likethere is a lot of
overcomplication that goes intothings, into digital, and
ultimately, digital needs tosupport the human.
(05:54):
Whether the human is thecustomer, or whether the human
is the customer success manageror an ops person, your digital
motion should support thosethings that the human is doing,
not interfere with those thingsthat a human is doing, and
sometimes bloated automationscan actually cause more workload
, and so I am a strong proponentof you know, when you're in the
(06:16):
middle of designing thesethings, hit the pause button for
a second and really analyzewhat the human implication of
these things are.
I think there's a nuance herethat your digital automations
should support humans.
In other words, you can getyour humans involved, but they
(06:39):
need to be involved at the righttime where they can actually
add value.
They shouldn't be involved tosupport the automation, and I
see that a lot.
I see that a lot where somebodygoes and builds an automation
but maybe a tool can't quite dothis cool thing that they want
them to do, and so you interjecthuman inputs into the
automation to support theautomation, and I think that's
(07:01):
completely, completely backwards.
Um, I, you know I'm guilty ofthat too, like I've, I've built
some stuff that requires somehuman inputs for the automation
to work, and while net netyou're probably still benefiting
from that, you know part of meis like why even do it if your
humans have to support theautomation versus the automation
(07:23):
supporting the human?
So in that spirit, I wanted toquickly talk you through and
kind of show my work a littlebit in my current role at Belfry
Software.
One of the things that we haverecently done is retooled the
renewal flow a little bit, orthe pre-renewal flow, I should
(07:45):
say, and I figured I would takeyou inside a little bit and just
talk through the process wewent through, to talk through
that renewal flow and what thatrenewal flow should look like.
That renewal flow and what thatrenewal flow should look like,
and the process of putting it inthe system and getting it live,
(08:07):
and then also what I'm thinkingabout in terms of next steps,
because the other thing aboutdigital automation is that
you're never really done right.
Even though you have it inplace, you're going to want to
review it every once in a whileto make sure it's still relevant
and still doing what you needit to do.
As you get more sophisticated,you're going to want to add to
it and you're going to want tomake it even more effective and
(08:29):
allow it to reach your customerwhere they are Okay.
So all this came about.
As a lot of you know, I starteda new gig in November of last
year, so it's been three, fourmonths or so, and one of the
things that we wanted to do isjust tackle some of the basics
(08:49):
first, and so we looked at therenewal flow or the pre-renewal
flow as being one of the thingsto tackle Some fundamentals
about the business and I'm notgiving away any trade secrets
here, so it's completely finehere.
Our contracts work on anauto-renewal basis and our
(09:10):
customers have to give us a60-day notice of churn before
the contract end date.
So we have a couple of dateshere to work with, right, we
have obviously the renewal date,we have the 60 day prior to
renewal date and then that kindof drove, our decision as to
(09:32):
when to start the renewal flow,which is essentially 2x.
So we're starting the renewalflow at 120 days prior to the
renewal.
Now you may think that that issomewhat excessive and I think
for some businesses it might beexcessive.
For some businesses, especiallyif you're in the practice of
(09:52):
doing multi-year contracts,that's probably too short.
But ultimately we felt thatthat extra 60-day window was
enough to proactively engage ourcustomers, uncover if there
were any issues that would leadthem towards a churn event and
whatnot, and also, just givenkind of like the operational
(10:15):
cadence of our customers, itkind of makes sense, right.
So we had essentially toyed witha couple of different flows
that were already in place.
So one of the tools that we areusing primarily on the sales
side is outreach.
So we had a couple of campaignsbuilt in outreach that were
doing a combination of emailsand auto dialers, and you know
(10:42):
that's cool, but also it's it'syet another tool and it's
actually kind of an expensivetool.
So we are heavy Vitaly usersand so my I had, you know, very
kind of selfish reasons for, youknow, trying to move the
renewal flow into Vitaly,keeping some of the good
elements of what we had built inoutreach but then adding to it
(11:05):
as well and vitally.
And that's precisely what wedid.
I had an onsite with thecustomer success managers shout
out to Christina and Tajay for afew days, and one of the things
we talked about was okay, whatshould this thing ideally look
like?
What tone do we want to strike?
Um?
(11:26):
You know how do we want toengage our customers?
And out of those conversationscame a um, a relatively, you
know, simple flow um that we areimplementing at the moment.
That is basically a combinationof automated emails as well as
tasks for the customer successmanager to engage via phone, so
(11:50):
physically picking up the phoneand calling.
But I think the meeting elementof this is very, very important
.
So if you're a CS leader andyou're going through and you're
designing these things.
I highly recommend that youdesign them, not in a bubble of
your own making.
Pull your customer successmanagers in.
(12:12):
Let's talk through what therenewal flow should look like.
Let's talk about what the toneof voice should be like in those
emails, what the tone of voiceshould be like in those emails
you know.
Really talk through that andgive your CSMs some ownership
around the development of thatlanguage, those emails, the
cadence and those kinds ofthings.
Because A, it means you don'thave to, you know, do any
(12:35):
enablement down the road on whatthe flow is, but B, it gives
them a sense of ownership and itactually is, you know,
represents them and represents avoice that they would like to
have as part of thesecommunications.
So that's kind of top tipnumber one when you're designing
these digital flows, renewal orotherwise.
Pull your CSMs in or pullwhoever it's going to affect in
(13:00):
to the conversation in, or pullwhoever it's going to affect in
to the conversation.
Make them a part of thatconversation.
So what we walked out with isessentially a weekly email
cadence to our account ownerwhat we call our account owner,
which could be companyleadership, could be a champion
within the company.
It is someone within thatcustomer that we have identified
(13:22):
as an account owner, and it isessentially a weekly email
campaign that outlines a coupleof different options.
So option one is they can justcoast through.
Everything's cool, no need toengage, you're going to
automatically renew Everything'shunky-dory.
(13:42):
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 theywant to engage with new terms or
they, you know have, areanticipating a spike in
employees or customers and thosekinds of things, and they want
to, you know, talk about termsand talk about the contract in
(14:05):
general, it gives them theoption to schedule that call
specifically.
And I would say, having donethis a little while now, maybe
2025% of our customers take usup on an actual conversation
about the renewal.
Maybe a little bit more, butmost are kind of like yep, this
is great, let's, you know, let'sgo, and at that point we
(14:26):
consider them, you know, renewedor we've gotten a verbal
commitment from the customerthat they are renewed.
Super easy.
Now, this is an.
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 tohave a chat about it, here's my
(14:49):
Calendly link.
And we've built this email flowin vitally to where it is
coming from their CSM.
Their email signature includestheir own Calendly invite, so it
does seem like the email isactually coming from them, which
I think is kind of digital 101,obviously.
So that's kind of a weeklycadence.
(15:10):
They you know the way thoseemails go out is actually a
reply to the thread.
So if we don't hear back fromthe customer, the automation in
seven days will just reply tothe thread with a series of
other emails as well that areslightly different in language
but have the same kind of samekind of language.
They do get increasingly kindof more urgent in their verbiage
(15:32):
as that 60 day windowapproaches, for obvious reasons,
right?
So you know, we want to makesure that our customers are
absolutely, you know, aware ofthe fact that their contract is
going to auto renew in 60 days.
Now this automation goestogether with a task that goes
to the CSM to actually do someoutreach to the customer and
(15:57):
follow up on the email that wassent.
You know, quite simple Give theaccount owner a quick call.
Did you get my email?
Great, do you have anyquestions?
Some might say it's a littlebit overkill and long-term.
I don't really know howsustainable it is.
But ultimately we made thestrategic decision to use it as
(16:19):
a really good time to engageyour accounts, and so we're kind
of throwing everything at it,both email automation as well as
the human connection element ofit.
Now there are a couple ofcaveats here and ways of
interrupting the flow, so tospeak, where those emails won't
(16:39):
go out, the flow, so to speak,where those emails won't go out.
The first one is based on kindof an account status that the
CSM sets.
So we have something in oursystem called CSM Pulse.
It's essentially a way for acustomer success manager to
describe the pulse of thecustomer, and if that pulse is
set to poor in other words thecustomer ain't doing so hot, we
(17:04):
actually are not going todistribute that renewal flow.
I think it goes without saying.
But we felt really stronglythat if there is an escalation
happening, if there's activeconversations happening that
denote really poor customerhealth, we felt it was obviously
in poor taste to send outautomated renewal emails that
(17:27):
are relatively friendly in tone.
So that is one kind ofinterruption method.
Another interruption method forthat flow is if a customer
responds to the emails, it willactually stop the flow full stop
, because we are having activeconversations with that customer
.
We do not need to send thereminder emails and bombard them
(17:47):
with things when we're alreadyhaving those conversations.
So we do this for about four orfive weeks or so, that weekly
cadence.
If they don't respond at all,they will get all four or five
emails right, increasing inurgency.
And then what we do is, aroundthe 67-day mark we will send
(18:10):
essentially a final kind ofwarning if we haven't engaged
with them, just saying hey, justso 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 morecongratulatory note that goes
out shortly after that renewalperiod or that 60-day mark that
says, hey, you're all set forthe renewal.
(18:31):
Let me know if I can help inany way.
Now I know what.
Some of you are probablythinking that this is
potentially a little bitoverkill.
And also I think there areprobably some that would say
well, why are you reminding themabout this renewal deadline so
(18:52):
vehemently?
Why wouldn't you just want itto pass and just kind of I'm not
going to say sweep it under therug, but why would you want to
alert them so vehemently aboutthe fact that they do have this
option not to renew?
And you know, that did kind ofcross my mind in the sense of,
(19:15):
you know, adjusting the languageto where it doesn't really talk
about the option not to renew,it just it's, it's mainly just a
reminder about the renewalitself.
And if there were opportunitiesfor uplift and opportunities
for expansion and strategicengagement and those kinds of
things, it doesn't explicitlysay, hey, you know, do you need
(19:38):
to churn?
Doesn't explicitly call thatout right?
So I know some of you may thinkthat is a little bit overkill
to do that much communicationaround it.
My take on it is that I wouldrather over-communicate than
under-communicate the renewalaspect of things and I would
(20:00):
rather really proactively try toengage the customer versus just
being reactive when somethinggoes wrong.
Because in my book there'snothing worse than actually not
hearing from customers.
Not having customers activelyengaged with your brand and your
support and your CSMs isdangerous period Like if you
(20:23):
don't know what's going on.
That's not a great sign.
It scares me so.
So that's a little bit aboutthat.
I didn't.
I didn't feel like it wasrelevant to specifically read
the copy of the email.
If you're curious about thecopy of the email, let me know,
ping me on LinkedIn or ping mevia email,
(20:44):
alexdigitalcustomersuccesscom,and I'll gladly send you some
verbiage there that we're using.
But I didn't feel like it wasnecessary because, I mean, we
all have our different ways.
The way that I express certainthings and the way that my team
expresses certain things may becompletely different than the
way you wish to do it, so Ifigured that was slightly
(21:05):
irrelevant.
But if I'm wrong, let me know,call me out on it.
The thing that I do not likeabout the renewal flow is that
it is very email heavy.
Right now we are in the processof getting a lot of in-app
stuff in place, includingchatbots and those kinds of
(21:25):
things, and so once that is inplace, we will probably shift a
lot of that notification over toin-app.
I'm also toying with what doesSMS look like in that flow,
because a lot of our customersprefer SMS.
They prefer getting textmessages versus emails because
(21:47):
they live on their phones rightNow.
I know that has its own set ofissues and I know that with SMS
you have to.
You know you have to do opt-insand you have to do all that.
My take on this is that youknow you implement as many
different vehicles as possiblethat are interconnected so that
(22:08):
your customer can choose howthey want those notifications.
If they live in email and theywould rather have email, I will
gladly send you those renewalnotices via email.
However, if you want them viatext message, I will gladly send
them there, and I think it'simportant to give your customers
that choice.
Right now it's kind of onechannel for us, but in the not
(22:31):
so distant future I fullyanticipate us being able to give
our account owners the optionof whether they would receive
SMS like to receive SMSnotifications versus email,
versus in-app, maybe even snailmail, right?
So we're toying with someoptions around that, especially
around thank you cards.
As you know, a few episodes backI had David Wax from
(22:54):
Handywritten on the show.
If you haven't listened to thatepisode, I highly recommend it.
Handywritten is essentially aservice where you can automate
handwritten notes to be sent outto your customers, and so when
our customers graduateonboarding and when our
customers renew, I want to beable to implement a flow there
(23:14):
that sends them automated.
Thank you notes on the back ofthat.
So, anyway, the whole point ofthis conversation around renewal
flow is because I feel likethere is a need for us to get
back to basics, and I also feellike there is a need for all of
us to show our work when we'redoing these kinds of things, and
(23:35):
so this is me showing my workand talking about a little bit.
I'd like to do a lot more ofthat, because we are in the
throes of building out aninfrastructure around CX right
now that takes a lot of thesethings into account, and so I
plan to talk a lot more aboutthat in the future on this show,
but for right now I'll leave itthere.
(24:07):
Last year or so has been to makesure that you know, if you're
listening to the show, I alwayslike to tell my guests that I
like to have the listener writeone or two or three or four or
five things down on theirnotebook that they can go
implement in their own program.
And so a bit of a plea to youif you are actively working on a
(24:31):
digital program, if you areactively getting automations in
place, building a program aroundsomething that was done
manually.
If you are in the weedsbuilding this stuff,
implementing and testing and A-Btesting and all that fun stuff,
I want to hear from you becauseI would love to start
incorporating some of your realworld examples onto this show.
(24:54):
I don't really know what that'sgoing to look like right now,
but I think perhaps for everysolo episode I might like to
have one or two people come onfor like five minutes and talk
about what it is they'rebuilding and share some of their
work, because I really like forthe show to be a little bit
more about you know thecommunity and people showing
their work, because I reallylike for the show to be a little
bit more about you know thecommunity and people showing
(25:15):
their work.
So if you've got somethingexciting that you're working on
that you are excited about, thatyou want to share with the
audience, please reach out to meeither via LinkedIn or Alex at
digital customer successcom.
We'd love to hear from you andlet me know what you're building
.
Super excited to hear from you.
So that's all from me for now.
(25:36):
I hope that you're having awonderful week and I hope this
has been a little bit helpful.
More interviews coming in thenext few days, plus another solo
episode coming real soon, sostay tuned for that.
For now, have a great day.
Thank you for joining me forthis episode of the Digital CX
Podcast.
If you like what we're doing,consider leaving us a review on
(25:56):
your podcast platform of choice.
If you're watching on YouTube,leave a comment down below.
It really helps us to grow andprovide value to a broader
audience and get moreinformation about the show and
some of the other things thatwe're doing at
digitalcustomersuccesscom.
I'm Alex Tergovich.
Thanks so much for listening.
We'll talk to you next week.
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