Tracking the Causes of Churn

Members of the ISP-Marketing list take a look at a variety of methods for finding out why customers unsubscribe, and discuss the various causes of churn.

[December 21, 2001]

On the ISP-Marketing list in December, PW queried,

"I am a marketing director for a 8500-member ISP. We are trying to assess reasons for deactivation, but 49 percent of our deactivations list their reason as 'other'. Any suggestions on how to elicit the real reasons for deactivating?"

A number of respondents suggested trying different ways of asking the question:

[EA noted] "You could always phone and ask them. What do the other 51 percent give as the main reasons? Maybe you could find some hints in those responses that could help you out."

[TY observed] "We put into place a plan to call every customer within the first week of their coming on board with us; you would be amazed at how this helps retention. The bulk of a user's frustrations are initial, and once they're cleared up, they become very loyal."

[JR added] "Maybe your list of options is too short, or doesn't give the common reasons. Try just not offering 'other' as a choice, and make sure your other choices are inclusive. Maybe allow them to rank or select multiple choices. And include choices like 'un-knowledgeable customer support,' 'rude customer support,' 'slow speeds,' 'too many hang-ups,' 'too many busy signals,' 'high price,' 'too much spam,' etc."

Others agreed that 'too much spam' is a danger worth considering:

[TY offered] "As an ISP, we were already aware of the damage caused by spammers, so we built a spam filter for our network: most of the mail is filtered to a spam mailbox for each user, and they can pick and choose preferences for it. The spam filtering is an option that is simply offered to our users, but not enforced. It works very well for us."

[JS agreed] "Spam can be quite an issue, if a lot of spammers are beating up on targets inside your domain. Pac Bell came out with some research last year that showed it was the number three reason for leaving. The other reasons were disappointment with service quality, and price/competitive offer."

—End