

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 17, 2021 • 20min
EP 105 | Mayor Francis X. Suarez - City as a Service (CaaS): How the best cities retain their citizens.
Today on the show we have Francis Suarez, Mayor of Miami.In this episode, we talked about the mass migration of startups and talent from places like San Francisco and New York to Miami. How Mayor Suarez retains his citizens by treating them as his customers, and what his citizen success team looks like. We also discussed how the Mayor attracts VC’s to the city, how he onboards new citizens for success, Miami’s development roadmap, and how Miami is incentivising tech companies to make the move. 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 10, 2021 • 34min
EP 104 | Erica Ayotte - How Privy doubled down on a cross functional CS team, and what this means for retention.
Today on the show we have Erica Ayotte, VP of Customer Success at Privy.In this episode, we talked about the importance of having deep expertise in a Customer Success team and how every CS manager at Privy has their very own unique superpower. Erica also explains how Privy successfully manages to provide a high-touch model feel to their customers at scale. Erica also shares the tactics she uses to grab her customer’s attention when sharing helpful advice, how Customer Success, Product, and Marketing collaborate and share responsibility around customer communication at Privy, to avoid bombarding customers. 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 3, 2021 • 33min
EP 103 | Brian LaFaille (Google) - Why Brian threw out the notion of customer journey maps and replaced it with a behaviour mapping exercise to increase retention.
Brian LaFaille, Global Head at Google, discusses customer retention post Google acquisition, Looker's explosive growth, and his behavior mapping exercise. They also talk about working remotely at Google, Google Cloud's growth, and the benefits of the Looker acquisition. Additionally, they discuss shifting to a low-touch approach, building connections with customers, and the launch of the customer success field guide.

Feb 24, 2021 • 35min
EP 102 | Harrison Rose (Paddle) - Crush churn by defining your product category and taking ownership.
Today on the show we have Harrison Rose, co-founder and Chief Customer Officer at Paddle.In this episode, we talked about what it was like for Harrison to just finish school and dive straight into building a hyper growth company. We then chatted about category creation and how Paddle is defining their Revenue Delivery Platform that they are taking ownership of and working towards creating and becoming the category leader.We also discussed the million dollar SaaS metric, how Paddle helps its customers with their retention challenges and helps untangle their Frankenstein revenue management stack. Harrison also shares some churn trends in the market and tips on how to deal with involuntary 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.

Feb 17, 2021 • 38min
EP 101 | Mike Sasaki and Tyler Ramsey (Mitek) - How to strategically plan and successfully execute a user onboarding revamp
Today on the show we have Mike Sakaki VP of Customer Success & Support, and Tyler Ramsey, Senior Customer Success Manager at Mitek. In this episode, we talked about what Mitek is and what they do, why Mike and Tyler made the decision to shift their onboarding flow, and the steps they took to implement their new onboarding program in order to mitigate churn.We also discussed the single metric Mitek uses to measure the ROI CSM’s deliver to the business and how they decided on that specific metric, how their CSM reduces the time to value and Mike also explains why every CSM team should have their own data analyst. 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 10, 2021 • 43min
EP 100 | Ziv Peled 💥 - How AppsFlyer flipped their focus on churn to retention & renewals and built growth predictability in the process.
Today is a BIG day as Churn FM turns 100 episodes old! It’s been an amazing learning curve and I’ve been super lucky to speak to and learn from some of the brightest minds in the business. For this special episode I wanted to give back to you, and all the other listeners of the show, who have helped shape and make it what it is today. So to do that I turned to our amazing guests and asked for a big favour which they were super cool about and agreed to. This week you can stand a chance to win a free 30-min coaching call with one of our guests participating, to experience the learnings first hand and get to ask that question you wish I had. We have over 20 guests participating and I’m sure more will follow this week which is awesome.To stand a chance of winning a session all you need to do is subscribe to our newsletter on churn.fm, listen to an episode of the guest you’d love to meet and share it on Twitter or LinkedIn to qualify.One of these amazing guests who’s agreed to take part is with us today on the show. Ziv Peled is the Chief Customer Officer at AppsFlyer and no stranger to Churn FM either as we previously hosted him on episode 50In this episode, we talked about the concept of 1% done in a SaaS business and why Ziv is now starting to look at the 99%, we also chatted about what has changed for Ziv in the past 7 years at AppsFlyer when it comes to retention, and what has stayed the same. We also discussed the different challenges of NPS and the importance of speaking to the right people within an organization, how Ziv measures the success of his CSM’s with a score based on inputs within their control, and how their team forecasts revenue and renewals.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 3, 2021 • 29min
EP 99 | Emily González-Cebrián - How Froged retains customers by scaling a personal and human onboarding experience.
Today on the show we have Emily González-Cebrián, co-founder and CEO of Froged.In this episode, we talked about why Emily decided to make the jump and start a SaaS business, how Froged was born, who their main customers are and how they help them with churn and retention. We also discussed the importance of onboarding and activation, their unique personalized and human onboarding experience, and how Froged uses Froged to retain their customers. 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 27, 2021 • 42min
EP 98 | David Sakamoto (GitLab) - Why customer success should be the orchestrators of your customer experience across the board
Today on the show we have David Sakamoto, VP of Customer Success at GitLab.In this episode, we talked about how David remembers names leading a team of over 200 people, the biggest differences between company giants like Cisco and hyper-growth startups like GitLab, and what David’s vision is for Customer Success at GitLab. We also discussed why a CS team should be orchestrating the customer experience across the board, the hiring process at GitLab, and how to maintain your company culture and values during rapid company scaling.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 20, 2021 • 38min
EP 97 | Mariah Hay - How Help Scout uses Support-Driven Growth to increase retention.
Today on the show we have Mariah Hay, VP of Product at Help ScoutIn this episode, Mariah shares the product principles she lives by, and the importance of having a cross-functional group of teams working towards outcomes with an aligned goal to avoid building a Frankenstein product. We also discussed how Help Scout’s product team uses OKR’s, what Support Driven Growth is and how you can implement it, and we dove deep into Product Specialists at Help Scout, who they are, what they do, and the role they play in the support 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.

Jan 13, 2021 • 45min
EP 96 | Derek Steer - How Mode’s hyper-focus on a specific customer persona increases retention and crushes the competition
Today on the show we have Derek Steer, Co-founder, and CEO of Mode.In this episode, we talked about what drove Derek as an analyst to start Mode, what they do, and who their typical customers are. We also discussed how Mode nudged competitors out of their customer’s workflow by having a hyper-focus on technical analysts and what differentiates them in the data analysis market. Derek also shares how analysts at Mode analyze churn and retention and why you should also investigate churn even if it’s not a problemAs 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.