Working ourselves out of a customer
This week we write about churn and the lessons learned.
This blog is a weekly reflection of WorkHound’s time at Dynamo, a logistics-focused accelerator based in Chattanooga, TN. This is week nine.
We did something new this week, we lost a customer. Unfortunately, one of our early customers informed us that they will not be continuing their subscription after this month. That’s a blow to be sure, but we are comforted by the reason. We worked ourselves out of a job.
WorkHound helped this company shine a light on a huge issue with their business. A poorly designed program from one of their partners was bleeding them dry. This program guaranteed 95% of participating drivers would be forced to leave the company for economic reasons. Obviously this created a lot of choice feedback from drivers. In fact, it was the subject of the large majority of our traffic.
Combining our driver intelligence with their operational data, this customer made the tough decision to axe the entire program. This will ultimately make the company more efficient, but in doing so they lost many drivers, and with them, the majority of feedback through the WorkHound platform.
This customer expressed satisfaction and gratitude with the way our product helped them with this issue, but chose to end the relationship after removing what they felt was the largest issue driving feedback.
Learning from Churn
Churn happens in business. But what separates companies is what they do to understand and address it.
Upon hearing the news, we immediately identified a few indicators of churn. An example of a key indicator is a lack of recent account activity. It’s painful for a customer to leave. But we’ll learn what measures show a “healthy” customer versus one that is not because of this churn.
We also learned about the characteristics that make a great customer.
We will add a new qualification to our sales process. A company needs to be able to take direct action on the WorkHound information.
For the departing customer, there were too many issues that appeared that were out of the power of the stakeholders.
No action will happen if there are roadblocks between the information we provide and the people responsible for action. And if we can’t help a company take action, we don’t create value!
It sucks to lose a customer. But I’m happy we helped them get better as a company and they helped us learn what our ideal customer looks like.
Onward.
Read our previous posts about our time at Dynamo
WorkHound Joins Dynamo // Week 1 Recap // Week 2 // Week 3 // Week 4// Week 5 // Week 6 // Week 7 // Week 8
What is WorkHound?
WorkHound is a software platform built to help carriers keep drivers and improve the truck driver experience. Truck drivers use their smartphones to share feedback and ideas with the carrier, which WorkHound aggregates and turns into actionable insights to help manage and retain drivers. WorkHound is co-founded by Andrew Kirpalani and Max Farrell.
Learn more:
Web: WorkHoundApp.com
Facebook: WorkHound
Twitter: @WorkHoundApp
Linkedin: WorkHound
Email:max@workhoundapp.com
