Your Silent Churn Checklist

This checklist will help you identify your greatest risks & opportunities for retention in the quarter ahead. I recommend repeating this exercise as a Client Services team on a quarterly basis, at minimum, if you are not already conducting Monthly Account Reviews and capturing client feedback. The results might surprise you and help you get ahead of risks in client relationships or internal collaboration.

How to Use this Checklist

Check any boxes in the three sections below that are true for your team (client team or the company as a whole depending on your role). If you can’t check more than 2 boxes in a section, review the corresponding Action Plan for advice on how to address your silent churn risks.

Goal Alignment - Check all that apply to your team.

• Our team’s goals can be clearly mapped to our client’s business goals.

• Our client contacts and their leaders know how our services will help them achieve their goals.

• Our team is proactively sharing relevant performance metrics with the client contacts.

• If we’re not achieving a metric, we know why and collaborate with the client to improve next month.  

Relationship Engagement - Check all that apply to your team.

• Our team shows up prepared with a meeting agenda and discussion topics for each call.

• The client contact(s) consistently attend and participate in the meetings we lead.

• The client contact(s) share questions and concerns with us in between meetings (Slack, email, 1:1 calls). 

• The client contact(s) recognize the value of the services we are providing for their budget.

Feedback and Opportunities - Check all that apply to your team.

• Our team has received and responded well to feedback from our client contact(s).

• We have a formal client feedback process in place (e.g. survey, email to leadership team) and the client is aware of this process.

• Our team has action-oriented account review meetings to address client feedback and roadmap opportunities across services. 

• We have a quarterly business review approach that we have adapted for all of our clients.

Your Action Plan to Prevent Churn

If you checked two or fewer truths about your team in each of the Goals, Relationship and Feedback sections above, you can use the recommendations below to help increase Account Manager awareness in client relationships and build your action plan to prevent churn.

Create Goal Alignment

1. Create a central shared dashboard or file where each client’s primary goals are tracked.

1. Time saving tip: Create an alert for when there is a significant change in a primary goal metric. Plan for Account Manager analysis and communication to the client.

2. Update your onboarding process and quarterly business reviews to draw connection between the client’s business goals and the goals you are accountable for achieving (e.g. Revenue and ROAS, Leads and Landing Page visits).

3. Set aside 1:1 time with Account Managers to proactively review primary goal progress and opportunities for improvement or strategic pivots in the roadmap.

Increase Relationship Engagement

1. Set an expectation with Account Managers to share meeting agendas at least one day in advance or set up a rolling agenda file in which a client contact can view and add topics. 

2. Help Account Managers build a meeting agenda template with topics that are consistently relevant to their client contacts and will earn their trust.

1. Time saving tip: Create a custom GPT to help draft agendas based on reviewing prior agendas, notes, client goals, and growth opportunities. 

3. Coach Account Managers to ask their client contact(s) for their highest priorities for each meeting. Then identify patterns in those priorities to plan more engaging conversations, quarterly business review topics, and updates to be shared in between meetings. 

Hear & Address Feedback & Opportunities for Growth

1. Coach Account Managers on how to listen for feedback in client meetings.

1. Time saving tip: Have Account Managers use an AI notetaker so they can focus on facilitating meetings and then revisit client responses for feedback themes. 

2. Establish a formal client feedback workflow that provides transparency for Account Managers and across the agency.

3. Create or update your Account Review meeting agendas, attendee list, and expectations. Every meeting should end with clear action items and an ownership plan.

Need help prioritizing or implementing your Action Plan? Send your Silent Churn Checklist results to kirsten@findthebrightpath.com and we’ll reply with at least 2 recommendations for your team.