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Instead of worrying about your churn rate, you could use a customer exit survey to get insightful data to make this inevitable churn in your favor. While having a high churn rate can kill your SaaS business, what you can do is incorporate a customer exit survey with an effective questionnaire to understand what makes them leave. According to a report, the average business tends to hear from 4% of its dissatisfied customers.
A customer who has canceled (or is about to cancel) their membership to your product is sent a questionnaire as part of a customer exit survey. This can be done over the phone, by email, or online. A report by McKinsey has shown that 70% of buying experiences are based on how the client has been treated and how they felt while interacting with the service, making exit surveys an integral part of any organization to establish a reasonable churn rate.
A customer exit survey is frequently a tick-box activity for organizations, with the findings being presented just as a colorful graph at the quarterly team meeting. However, the customer exit survey is an excellent opportunity for growth-oriented organizations to learn about the business from people who matter.
30+ Effective customer exit survey questions you must ask for 2024
Here are 36 questions you can include in your customer exit survey that will help you create great actionable strategies for your company’s growth, product, and support teams.
Customer exit survey questions regarding the competition
1. What will you utilize going forward in place of our product or service?
2. How did you discover this substitute?
3. What do you like better about this alternative?
4. Did the cost or the features have more of an impact on your choice?
Customer exit survey questions regarding the product
5. What aspects of our product or service did you utilize most frequently?
6. How frequently did you utilize our products or services?
7. Were there any features that you hardly ever or never used?
8. Which feature of our product or service did you find to be the most challenging to use?
9. Which features of our good or service were too complicated to be of any use?
10. Did our product or service meet your expectations in any way?
11. What price range would you accept for our item or service?
12. How could we improve our pricing? (Clearer, better organized, various plans, etc.)
Customer exit survey questions regarding the process
13. What steps in our onboarding procedure were unclear?
14. What did our onboarding leave out that you only realized later? Did you receive adequate assistance during onboarding, or was it too late?
15. Which method of onboarding do you prefer? (In-app, real-time demos, instructions, etc.)
16. How may our billing procedure be improved?
Customer exit survey questions regarding your client JTBD
17. What issues were we able to help you with?
18. What issues couldn't we resolve for you?
19. What success criteria were employed in the procedures for which you used our product or service?
20. Has your use of our product changed from how you initially anticipated it?
21. Can you describe an ideal customer for our product according to you?
Customer exit survey questions regarding the team
22. How often did you get in touch with us for customer service?
23. What led you to contact them in the first place?
24. Were your problems swiftly resolved by them?
25. Were there any efforts made by our staff that you didn't like?
26. How can we make customer service better?
27. Were there any instances where our staff provided excellent service?
Customer exit survey questions regarding the marketing & sales
28. Did we fall short of any expectations you had for our goods or services? Describe them.
29. Where did the anticipations originate? (A blog post, a brochure, or a sales call?)
30. Do you believe any information was omitted or withheld throughout the sales process?
31. What aspects of our sales staff did you like?
32. What about our sales procedure did you find objectionable?
33. Where do you do your research before buying goods or services?
34. Was there any information on our website that you felt was lacking?
35. Do you get our newsletter? What encouraged you to sign up?
36. Will you keep reading our emails or blogs?
Tips for excellent customer exit survey questions
In order to get the most out of your customer exit survey, it is crucial to ask the correct questions.
1. Short surveys produce better outcomes
It is discovered that SaaS customer development surveys with a length of one to two minutes had a response rate of 90% or higher.
2. Optimize for desktop and mobile
It is reported that 75% of customers respond to surveys on their mobile devices.
3. Mix open-ended with closed-ended questions
Keep them interested, the average person's attention span is about eight seconds these days.
What to do with your customer exit survey questions findings
Only if you use the results to your advantage will your customer exit survey be worthwhile. You can spend some time learning some crucial lessons rather than simply putting away replies.
Enhance your exit survey using engagement and completion data, and use the survey findings to determine what consumers want, what they don't want, and how to make them happier.
1. Analyze answers
Naturally, not every completed survey will be given equal weight. In your survey group, there will undoubtedly be outliers as well as accounts that were predicted to churn due to a significant change in their business or other indications that they weren't a good fit.
However, you should gather your responses and make a list of what you learned. Think about how turnover rates change based on the time of year, the type of client, the structure of the company, or other elements. Connect your platform's quantitative data with qualitative data. For instance, you can discover that those who recently left didn't use 90% of your tools or didn't finish all of the activation stages.
Check to see whether greater customer service, training, or marketing may have improved the relationship.
2. Share your findings with other teams
Too frequently, the group in charge of overseeing the departure survey fails to share its findings with the wider group. Customer service or marketing may choose not to share information with the whole growth team, preventing product and sales from seeing data that may improve their performance. The information is latent and never exposed to light.
Consider include a phase in your customer exit survey procedure that allots time for results compilation and dissemination to the business. Selecting one or two persons to serve as the project owners is beneficial. Encourage them to arrange the information, record their discoveries, and create a brief presentation that includes any suggested next actions.
Important background information, such as who you spoke with, why you developed the survey, how long it lasted, and quotations from the respondents, should be shared with the wider team. This makes sure that everyone is on the same page and motivates team members to complete any additional work.
3. Keep interacting with churned customers (appropriately)
You shouldn't cut off all contact with a consumer just because they churn. When a new piece of software falls short of their expectations or when they learn about platform changes, customers frequently consider going back to their old program.
By checking in with churned accounts sometimes, you can keep the door open to such talks. Don't bombard them with newsletters, promotions, or other information they don't want. Instead, send them a few personal, welcoming emails each year. As you work to regain their confidence, let them know about any platform updates you've made, especially if they were inspired by their input.
In order to do this, you could wish to indicate which clients are most and least likely, respectively, to re-engage with you at the time of their leave. Re-engaging with accounts that have drastically changed their purpose or that have greatly upset your team is a waste of effort.
4. Reduce attrition by planning more regular check-ins
Keep in mind that preventing future churn is the primary objective of your departure survey. You should think about what actions you may take to strengthen current customer connections in order to accomplish this. To do this, many people set up more frequent check-ins. According to one research, 11% of turnover might have been prevented if the company had just contacted the consumer in advance.
Asking your clients for feedback is something you should do even when things are going well. Make users feel as though your staff is involved in their achievement by letting them know this. You may reduce turnover by fostering consistent two-way communication and by establishing clear expectations.
Conclusion
It's not the end of the world if a client leaves; rather, it's a chance to transform their loss into your gain. Surveys of departing customers are one approach to do this. Remember to use these polls wisely and act on the information you find.
