Keep customers 3 of 19 in this group
SOP 131
Run the keep-one and remove-one survey
What this page is for. Use it to find out which of the things you deliver your customers actually value, so you can do more of those and cut the rest. It gives the reason to deliver less, the survey's question and its follow-up and how often to ask them, and how to keep in touch one to one between surveys.
SOP-131-Run-the-keep-one-and-remove-one-survey.md
1. Why ask: deliver less, but better
Think in value per second, not in seconds of value. Less but better beats more and decent. Overwhelm is said to be the number one reason customers leave.
In one example, an owner ran a newsletter business that made $500k per month. Asked what he did to cut churn, he said he could list everything that did not work. Churn was lowest when he ran one question-and-answer call a month, staying on until every question was answered, and wrote one long printed newsletter a month. Then the calls went from monthly to weekly, and he added more on top, and every addition raised churn. The moral drawn: sometimes less is more, and there is wisdom in deletion.
Decide on the core 2 or 3 things you deliver, and make them really good. One program is said to be on its tenth version, each one shorter and simpler than the last, because overwhelm is the first reason for churn.
Flag: how many core things. Here you decide on 2 or 3. SOP 168, section 3, says that customers, asked what the product must just do, usually name one or two. This page does not settle which reading is right.
Keeping customers comes down to making sure they consume the value, not burying them in it, so keep it as small and as good as you can. Most people start a YouTube video and do not finish it, start a course and do not finish it, set a goal and do not follow through. Make your product as easy as possible to consume: cut the effort and the sacrifice it asks for. When customers stop consuming, contact them more and more often.
2. The survey
Twice a year, send customers a survey that lists everything you provide. It helps you identify the core 2 or 3 things your product or service does. Ask this, then follow up with the second question:
- Keep one. If everything on this list went except one thing, which one would you most want to keep?
- Remove one. If everything stayed except one thing, which one would bother you least to see go?
Then act on the answers: do more of what they like, and cut what they do not.
In one example, a company asked this question and learned that its customers loved the events it threw. It listened, and events became one of its largest product lines.
One line comes before the survey: make your product easy to consume.
3. Between surveys: reach out one to one
Between the large surveys, reach out to customers regularly. Reaching out one to one every two to three weeks is said to have kept more people than never speaking with customers at all. Another wording is checking in every few weeks, if the price point allows it.
Each reach-out follows the reply pattern of SOP 14 — Reply with acknowledge, compliment, ask:
- Acknowledge something you have seen them do.
- Compliment them on something.
- Ask a question.
An extra finding, and a counterintuitive one: the wealthier the customers, the less handholding they typically want.
Reach out regularly so it looks like you care, because you should.
4. What this page does not decide for you
- When in the year to send the two surveys. Not established on this page.
- What price point allows the one-to-one reach-out. This page gives no figure for it.
- How to decide what to cut when the answers split. Not established on this page.
- How to adjust the reach-out for wealthier customers, beyond the finding that they typically want less handholding. Not established on this page.
5. The checklist
| Step | What you do |
|---|---|
| First | Make your product easy to consume; decide on the core 2 or 3 things and make them really good |
| Survey | Twice a year, listing everything you provide |
| First question | Keep one: if all but one thing went, which would they most want to keep |
| Follow-up | Remove one: if all but one thing stayed, which would bother them least to see go |
| Act | Do more of what they like; cut what they do not |
| Between surveys | One to one every two to three weeks (every few weeks, if the price point allows it) |
| Each reach-out | Acknowledge, compliment, ask (SOP 14) |
| Wealthier customers | Typically want less handholding |
| When they stop consuming | Contact them more and more often |
6. What this page does not cover
Removing features for a customer who is about to cancel is SOP 73 — Feature-downsell customers before they cancel. The cancellation call is SOP 132 — Run the cancellation call. Finding the point at which customers start to get value is SOP 129 — Derive the activation point. Onboarding is SOP 139 — Onboard customers to the activation point, and the customer journey is SOP 143 — Build the four-milestone customer journey.
Terms defined on this page
- Keep-one and remove-one survey
- Twice a year, list everything you provide and ask customers which one thing they would keep if the rest went, then which they would least mind losing. Expand what they value and remove the rest.
- Overwhelm
- Giving customers more than they can use; named the top reason customers leave.
- Value per second
- How much value each moment of a piece or a service carries, against how long it takes. Length is never the problem, only boredom: less but better beats more and decent.