Churn Bites Episode 1
Topic: Client Onboarding | Guest: Brian Polackoff | Date: November 2024
00:06
Hey folks, I'm Dan Wilson and we're here with another episode of Churn Bites. And I'm here today with Brian Polackoff. Brian, how you doing? I'm doing good, Dan. So before we dive in, can you give us a quick intro of who you are and what you're about? Sure, absolutely. So my name is Brian Polackoff and I'm currently the CEO of Churn Assassin. But before that, I started a business back in 2009, VAIRKKO.
00:32
It was a B2B SaaS company and we specialize in HR and learning management systems for mid-market organizations. Sweet. So tell us a little bit about VAIRKKO. What's the story and why was onboarding the topic of this episode such a big deal for them. Absolutely. So VAIRKKO, it was, it was founded originally as kind of like a corporate internet system and it rapidly changed into a very large application. Everything on the HR side from
01:01
payroll, the scheduling to employ management benefits, you name it, even on the learning management side, with training tracking, learning management systems, classroom training, skills testing, and more. So because the application was so big, it required our customers to go through pretty exhaustive onboarding experience. And we were finding that these customers, they just were having struggles getting through the onboarding. Sometimes our onboarding would last eight, nine,
01:31
sessions, each session lasting about an hour. So it was an arduous experience for everyone involved. Wow, so lots of stuff to cover. What was it about the onboarding experience specifically that was such a hurdle for them and caused all the problems? So a lot of different aspects, as you'd imagine. So different companies wanted different onboarding approaches but essentially we all consume information differently. Some consume better through.
01:58
audio, listening, some need to get their hands dirty and things of that nature. But essentially, there was so much content in our onboarding that needed to be delivered to the customer so that way they could adopt the platform and kind of be advocates of the system and become ultimately super users of the application. And in order to reach that level, they needed to have this information in order to be able to utilize the system.
02:28
It was a lot time involvement, but also learning. And I don't know if you've ever sat in a college classroom for more than two, three hours of the clip, your brain starts to check out and that's not good for anyone. So we had a lot of obstacles present themselves as we went through this onboarding process and trying to figure out where in the process could be improved or efficiencies gained. Okay, so you're throwing a lot at them. There's a lot to cover. They're struggling to take it all in and...
02:56
eight, nine hours of training sessions and they're having a hard time getting to value. So once you saw the issues, what was your plan to take it on? So we iterated, like I said, a bunch of different times. We tried a lot of different things. Some of these iterations, some of them worked marginally better than others. But ultimately, we needed to find a way to try and really accomplish two things. The first thing was to deliver an onboarding.
03:25
experience the way that the customer wanted. We found that some of our customers wanted a virtual onboarding through webinar and zoom. And that works really, really well for some, but for the other folks, it didn't work at all. They felt disconnected. They wanted someone on site with them at their location, sitting right next to them to be able to ask questions to and point to the screen and say, say what is this? How does that interact? And so we had that obstacle, that key business objective of how do we
03:54
make sure that both of these groups can get the onboarding experience that they want. And then the second one was how do we shorten the onboarding experience for the folks that couldn't spend eight, nine training sessions over the course of a month with our onboarding team? How do we condense that down into a shorter time period? So those were really the two objectives that we ran at full steam to try and improve our onboarding experience.
04:20
Yeah, so on one hand you're letting customers pick the format that's really going to work the best for them And then on another hand you're taking a look at your own processes and seeing how you can condense them down and make them shorter I'm curious like if you zoom all the way back out after you implemented these changes what was different about the business? So yeah, so we noticed shortly after identifying these areas in onboarding that we could tangibly fix
04:49
We noticed a lot of really positive things. Number one, we noticed our client adoption rate grew exponentially. We had more champions using the product and these folks, they refer to other folks outside. So we are a referral network grew. We also had clients that got through the onboarding process and they stayed with us, right? So we no longer had the high turnover within that 90 day sweet spot period right after onboarding stopped.
05:18
And that was a big problem for us for a long time was within that 90 day period, clients just, they wouldn't adopt the platform and ultimately they just would cancel because they never adopted it. So our adoption went up, our social network went up and our champions grew. That sounds pretty fantastic. I'm really happy you shared that with our audience and I'm looking forward to more conversations with you in the future. That's it for churn bites this week, folks. Thanks for tuning in.
About our guest...
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As the Founder and CEO of Churn Assassin, I’ve dedicated my career to solving one of the most significant challenges faced by B2B SaaS companies: customer churn. For Customer Success Managers (CSMs) and founders, predicting and preventing churn can be incredibly difficult, especially with the limitations of traditional customer success platforms. These tools often come with steep implementation costs, unreliable churn scores, and high price points, leaving many teams frustrated and financially drained. That's why I built Churn Assassin—to provide a powerful churn prediction and mitigation platform that’s both effective and accessible.
Churn Assassin leverages cutting-edge machine learning and behavioral analysis to identify churn risks even before a customer begins to consider cancellation. Through our advanced churn predictions, evidence-based signals, and detailed churn metrics, we enable CSMs and founders to act early, preventing client losses and improving retention. By providing actionable insights, we empower teams to not just predict churn, but actively manage it, ultimately reducing churn rates by up to 38% for SaaS companies.
Our platform is designed to be user-friendly and intuitive, with no data science degree required. We specialize in helping businesses bolster their revenue by enhancing customer retention through practical, evidence-driven strategies. With tools like Churn Signal alerts and predictive churn models, we provide teams with the resources they need to engage with at-risk customers in real time. Our mission is to simplify churn prevention and ensure that businesses can focus on growth without constantly worrying about client cancellations.
Beyond the software, I am passionate about sharing insights and strategies that drive innovation in customer success. I frequently share content that challenges the status quo and explores new ways to approach customer retention. My goal is to help Customer Success Managers and SaaS founders exceed their retention targets and dramatically increase customer lifetime value, transforming churn into an opportunity for improvement and growth.
If you’re ready to get ahead of churn and significantly improve your client retention strategy, let’s connect. I’m committed to helping businesses like yours bring churn to its knees and thrive in today’s competitive SaaS landscape. Join me in revolutionizing the way we approach customer success and retention.
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