

CHURN FM
Andrew Michael
CHURN FM is the podcast for subscription economy pros. Every Wednesday we hear how the world’s fastest growing companies are tackling churn and using retention & engagement to fuel their growth.
Episodes
Mentioned books

Mar 23, 2022 • 31min
EP 158 | Jonathan Widawski (Maze) - How Maze Segments Churn Based On Their Products Vision
Today on the show we have Jonathan Widawski, Founder and CEO of Maze.In this episode, Jo shared how Maze emerged out of a need to validate assumptions fast about a previous startup he founded. He continued to share how the prototype evolved into the company we know today.We then dove into how Jo and the team are introducing a sales motion on top of their existing product-led strategy and the challenges that come with it. Finally, we discussed how they segment and analyze their churn and retention, and how they use this segmentation to prioritize their product roadmap.As usual, I'm excited to hear what you think of this episode, and if you have any feedback, I would love to hear from you. You can email me directly at Andrew@churn.fm. Don't forget to follow us on Twitter.Churn FM is sponsored by Vitally, the all-in-one Customer Success Platform.

Mar 16, 2022 • 38min
EP 157 | David Darmanin (Hotjar) - Understanding the difference between acceptable and worrying churn
Today on the show we have David Darmanin, Founder and previous CEO of Hotjar.In this episode, David shared what he misses most about being the CEO of Hotjar, and what led him to realize it was time to step down and hand over the role. We then dove into the importance of giving your people the freedom to fail, how Hotjar reduced churn by doubling down on their ICP in their go-to-market strategy, and the differences between acceptable and worrying churn. David then explains the Hotjar ethos and the impact it has had on the company. As usual, I'm excited to hear what you think of this episode, and if you have any feedback, I would love to hear from you. You can email me directly at Andrew@churn.fm. Don't forget to follow us on Twitter.Churn FM is sponsored by Vitally, the all-in-one Customer Success Platform.

Mar 9, 2022 • 38min
EP 156 | Kyle Pursell (Shopify) - Leveraging email to increase engagement & retention
Today on the show we have Kyle Pursell, Senior Lead of Growth Marketing at Shopify.In this episode, Kyle shared his biggest lesson upon joining Shopify on how they effectively enable collaboration across the various cross-functional functions and how they maintain alignment through a powerful company mission.We then dove into how Kyle and the team measured PMF at Inman when switching to a subscription business for their content. We dove deep into how you can leverage email to increase engagement and retention and the tradeoffs you need to consider with email frequency to mitigate churn.As usual, I'm excited to hear what you think of this episode, and if you have any feedback, I would love to hear from you. You can email me directly on Andrew@churn.fm. Don't forget to follow us on Twitter.Churn FM is sponsored by Vitally, the all-in-one Customer Success Platform.

Mar 2, 2022 • 34min
EP 155 | Maranda Dziekonski (Swiftly) - Building out a high-touch Customer Success team
Today on the show we have Maranda Dziekonski, Chief Customer Officer at Swiftly.In this episode, Maranda shared her early career experience and how she made a move from the factory production line to an office role and later into Customer Success.We then dove into Maranda’s framework for assessing the Customer Success function when joining a new company, how she went about splitting out the high-touch customer success function at Swiftly, and we closed off with some tips and hiring advice for Customer Leaders building new teams. As usual, I'm excited to hear what you think of this episode, and if you have any feedback, I would love to hear from you. You can email me directly on Andrew@churn.fm. Don't forget to follow us on Twitter.Churn FM is sponsored by Vitally, the all-in-one Customer Success Platform.

Feb 23, 2022 • 43min
EP 154 | Bryan Plaster (CompleteCSM) - Creating true customer evangelists with workshops and success days
Today on the show we have Bryan Plaster, CEO, and Co-founder of CompleteCSM.In this episode, Brain shared his experience starting customer Success from scratch at multiple organizations and helping Informatica and Talend move from on-premise software sales to a cloud subscription business.We then talked about the evolution of Customer Success over the last 15 years followed by how to create customer evangelists using workshops and success days. We wrapped up the episode with Bryan sharing the motivations for starting CompleteCSM and how they help their customers uncover the customer signals throughout their lifecycle.As usual, I'm excited to hear what you think of this episode, and if you have any feedback, I would love to hear from you. You can email me directly on Andrew@churn.fm. Don't forget to follow us on Twitter.Churn FM is sponsored by Vitally, the all-in-one Customer Success Platform.

Feb 16, 2022 • 35min
EP 153 | Aggelos Mouzakitis (Glofox) - Taking a more human approach to diagnosing churn and retention.
Today on the show we have Aggelos Mouzakitis, Product-led growth Lead at Glofox.In this episode, Aggelos shared his take on product-led growth followed by the biggest misconceptions and mistakes companies make when they think about adopting a product-led strategy.We then discussed why companies need to forget the data and analytics and take a more human approach to diagnose churn and retention. We dove into methods, tactics, and stages of the user journey that you can focus on to extract meaningful insights and help you truly understand the reasons for churn and not just the surface-level response we typically get in exit surveys.As usual, I'm excited to hear what you think of this episode, and if you have any feedback, I would love to hear from you. You can email me directly on Andrew@churn.fm. Don't forget to follow us on Twitter.Churn FM is sponsored by Vitally, the all-in-one Customer Success Platform.

Feb 9, 2022 • 38min
EP 152 | Diana De Jesus (Catalyst) - How to break into Customer Success and tips to thrive in the role
Today on the show we have Diana De Jesus, Customer Success Manager Strategist at Catalyst.In this episode, Diana shared her advice on how to break into and land a role in customer success, sharing tips she took personally to do so. We then talked about support-driven growth, what it is, where it works best, and how you can apply it.We also discussed how customer support and customer success can best work together and why Catalyst has customer support as a part of their customer success team.As usual, I'm excited to hear what you think of this episode, and if you have any feedback, I would love to hear from you. You can email me directly on Andrew@churn.fm. Don't forget to follow us on Twitter.Churn FM is sponsored by Vitally, the all-in-one Customer Success Platform.

Feb 2, 2022 • 38min
EP 151 | Christian Wiklund (unitQ) - How unstructured user feedback can impact churn & retention.
Today on the show we have Christian Wiklund, founder, and CEO at unitQ.In this episode, we talked about the huge importance of monitoring the quality of your product, what lead Christian to build unitQ, and how they help companies improve retention, growth, and engagement. We also discussed how data silos across departments slow things down, and how companies need cross-functional data on demand. Christian then talks about million-dollar bugs, how we measure product quality, and how online reviews can make or break your business. As usual, I'm excited to hear what you think of this episode, and if you have any feedback, I would love to hear from you. You can email me directly on Andrew@churn.fm. Don't forget to follow us on Twitter.Churn FM is sponsored by Vitally, the all-in-one Customer Success Platform.

Jan 26, 2022 • 44min
EP 150 | Chris O’Neil (Glean) - The importance of alignment, clarity, and cohesion across a team to reduce churn, and how to achieve it.
Today on the show we have Chris O’Neil, Chief Bussiness Officer at Glean. In this episode, we talked about how joining Google and being around great mentors helped Chris with his career track and where he is today. Chris then shares what you need to get started as a leader to set yourself up for success in the long run. We also discussed the importance of alignment, clarity, and cohesion across a team and how to achieve it, followed by examples on how Google, Slack, and Evernote successfully put their vision statements to use with clarity. Finally, Chris explains what Glean is, and what his role as CBO includes.As usual, I'm excited to hear what you think of this episode, and if you have any feedback, I would love to hear from you. You can email me directly on Andrew@churn.fm. Don't forget to follow us on Twitter.Churn FM is sponsored by Vitally, the all-in-one Customer Success Platform.

Jan 19, 2022 • 39min
EP 149 | John Zeratsky (Character) - Using Design Sprints to increase retention.
Today on the show we have John Zeratsky, Co-Founder of Character, and the best-selling co-author of Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days.In this episode, we talked about John’s time at Google Ventures, and how they helped hundreds of early-stage startups find product-market-fit using Design Sprints. John then talked about how they first came up with the idea for Design Sprints and why they followed on to develop the process further and productize it into a book.We then went over the different stages of a design sprint and discussed how using this model can help companies increase retention. As usual, I'm excited to hear what you think of this episode, and if you have any feedback, I would love to hear from you. You can email me directly on Andrew@churn.fm. Don't forget to follow us on Twitter.Churn FM is sponsored by Vitally, the all-in-one Customer Success Platform.


