Customer retention and relationships

Is there anything worse than a relationship ending?

You can probably think of a time that happens. Ughh. Yowch.
Exhausting to think about.

If your product had feelings, it’d probably feel the same way about customers who leave.

And we can’t have that.

There are 3 ways you can use edutainment principles to increase customer retention for your product or service. Your product’s feelings are at stake:

1) Your brand becomes a friend, not just a service provider

When a service provider comes to your house, you offer them a drink then keep out of their way. You want them there only for as long as they’re doing precisely what they need to, then you want them gone.

When a friend comes to your house, you offer them your whole fridge, a place to stay if they need it. You want them there for as long as they want to be there.The difference is profound. We need to give the brand a voice and personality (in both product UX and content) to ‘befriend’ rather than merely ‘transact’. Make signing up easy, valuable, and enjoyable. Make getting started easy, valuable, and enjoyable. Don’t behave like a service provider. Behave like a friend.

2) Edutaining content: another reason to stay engaged

Knowledgebase. FAQs. Documentation. Guides. These all sound boring, don’t they? That impression didn’t come from nowhere. We learned this the hard way over many years: going deeper with a product is kinda boring.

But we want users to go deeper. So use better paradigms. If your people enjoy the comic in their newspaper, use that paradigm. If your people enjoy watching fun videos on YouTube or Netflix in their own time, use that paradigm. If your people like playing games, use that paradigm. Give them WHAT they want to know, HOW they love to consume.

I explore this topic in more detail in this week’s issue of The Productoon newsletter. Check it out!