Beating Mobile Churn

Economy
Attention Deficit Disorder diagnoses exploded after the 1996 release
of Adderall. App development exploded in the last few years. What
has happened between 1996 and 2016 (besides war, famine, and the
release of Kanye’s new clothing line)? The children diagnosed with
A.D.D are now mobile’s most prominent users.

Acquiring these fickle users is extremely costly. According to Fiksu,

15 %
Increase in CPP last
13 %
Increase in CPP last
year despite 20% CPM year despite flat CPM
the CPP (Cost Per Purchaser) has risen over 15% for iOS. This is decrease for iOS. for Android.
despite advertising cost (CPM) decreasing 20% for iOS.

Fiksu DSP CPM Index Fiksu DSP Cost Per Purchaser Index

Source: Fiksu Index

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Acquiring new users is costly, difficult to maintain, and competitive. The app market is
incredibly crowded. With so many options to accomplish the same tasks, users are less
inclined to stick around. An app’s functionality needs to be on par with user expectations.
According to Andrew Chen, the average app loses 77% of its DAUs within the first 3 days
after the install.

Retention Curves for Android Apps

77 %
DAUs lost within the
first 3 days on average.

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Getting to the Heart of Churn

1. Know your partner 2. Communicate on terms

(User Personalization) that work for both of you
(In-App Communication)
Beating mobile churn in such an economy requires opening up
channels of communication on the part of app developers, marketers,
and support agents, and keeping these channels in-app. At its core,
increasing engagement (thereby reducing churn) is about establishing
lasting relationships. And, like all relationships in life, this rests on a
few central principles for behavior and interaction:

3. Give your partner the 4. Maintain effective and

resources to grow stronger clear communication
(Self-Help) (Feedback Loops)

In this ebook we will describe how these four strategies can be

employed to reduce churn, and why they work so effectively.

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1 Relevant Personalization
Forrester coined the term “Mobile Moments” to describe a point in time when a user
pulls out his/her phone to get what he/she wants immediately, in context. Each mobile
moment is an opportunity for you, as an app, to win engagement and loyalty. Using
custom metadata and in-app behaviors, you can capitalize on these
moments by providing your customer with precisely what he/she
wants. Leverage user data to predict future problems; specifically,
leverage device data combined with user preferences/habits to
suggest better behavior, or circumvent future issues that would
prevent someone from using your product.

For example an e-commerce app might use geolocation as a trigger

to send a push campaign targeting VIP customers with a 20%
discount offer while they shop at your storefront. A mobile game
could segment VIP players based on their in-app purchases (IAP) and use this information
to gift currency that pull players back into the game to continue leveling up. Mobile allows
you to tailor experiences in these incredibly context-driven ways. Personalization is not
about greeting a user by name anymore; it’s about understanding his/her status and
relationship to your brand. By capitalizing on mobile moments through contextual offers
and highly personalized messaging, you can win user loyalty and engagement.

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2 Communicate Directly with
Users Inside the App
Churn often occurs as a result of a rather small incident: an app
crashes twice in one day, an unanswered question, or a minor
bug affects some functionality within the product. Every user
has experienced this and every app has been guilty of these
faults. But it’s the apps who recover from these mistakes who
beat mobile churn.

The average company never hears from 96% of its customers,

and for every one vocal complaint there are 26 more customers
who stay silent and simply leave an app to download an eager
competitor just waiting for their customer’s business.

In this case, you miss out on two things:

1. A customer

2. The opportunity to discover what it is you’re doing

that’s driving customers away.

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 Communicate Directly with Users Inside the App
2

Offering feedback (via in-app prompts or FAQs) provides a private

channel for an unhappy user to vent his/her frustrations and
directly communicate with you (instead of leaving a public 1 star
rating in the App Store), while giving you the opportunity to fix an
issue. Ultimately avoiding the churn that occurs when users stay In-app
silent about the problems they’re encountering. But more about that
in Section 4. Proactive in-app communication is about anticipating
prompts
where and when users might get stuck and ensuring there is a
process in place to follow up with helpful resources. This can
include in-app messages like product updates or known bug issues In-app
FAQs
or push notifications to target specific users.

Try setting up a workflow based on common behaviors

characteristic of a user slipping away, then send a push message
offering help along with deep linking to a specific FAQ listed in
your app’s knowledge base. This proactive approach to support
and engage these at-risk users reduces the likelihood of user
abandonment. Forcing users to do their own detective work only
creates more frustration as they navigate through a fragmented
mobile experience. Keep them inside the app with push and in-app
messaging, to increase engagement and reduce churn.

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 Communicate Directly with Users Inside the App
2

Try setting up a workflow based on

common behaviors characteristic of
users slipping away.

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3 Provide Options for Self Help
and Self Service
By leveraging tools such as in-app chat, or pairing unique customer
and device data with contextual FAQs, companies can provide
customers with the information needed to solve their problems
before they become a true point of contention (aka, churn).

A recent study found that 67% of people prefer self-service over

speaking to a company representative. Self-help on mobile can
come in myriad ways; airlines, for instance, have done an all-around
spectacular job of providing self-service options. Travelers can
check in, scan their boarding passes (on email or mobile app),
change seats, upgrade to first class, and book flights-- all on their
preferred device.

Aloft Hotels is another example of how to effectively offer electronic

self-help options. There’s almost no reason to ever go to the front
desk, with their self-serve kiosks for checking in and printing
boarding passes, their phone operated keys, self-service pantry,
and option to communicate with the front desk via the app or text
message. They have made mobile the nexus of their entire product.

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3 Provide Options for Self Help and Self Service

For companies who aren’t trying to shift their entire operation into
self-service, though, allowing users to help themselves can be as
simple as creating robust in-app FAQs.
FAQs should always
Not all users interact with your brand in the same way, and not all be tailored to:
users will have the same questions. Preempt these differences
by offering FAQs personalized to your user’s identifying factors.
Furthermore, using analytics on FAQs can help you understand
common issues & optimize your knowledge base content. The user’s location
Perhaps someone drops off the platform after viewing a certain
FAQ three times.

By allowing your users the opportunity to use solve problems on The user’s device
their preferred device, without ever having to leave the app, you are (iPhone, Android, Windows)
reducing the risk of the user abandoning the app while trying to get
a need met.

Furthermore, using analytics to track how users interact with The user’s status as a customer
self-service options will enable you to identify key churn moments (e.g. a Lyft driver or passenger)

and resolve potential problems before they arise.

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4 Create Feedback Loops
One of the most effective ways to reduce mobile churn is to solicit customer feedback
Learn from
and incorporate it into your product before it becomes a problem.
customer reviews
There are two aspects to this process:

1. Get positive and negative feedback within your app (not via the App Store),

2. Effectively organize this feedback into actionable information for your developers.

Engaging in this conversation can happen in myriad ways (many of which we’ve
outlined in this paper), but in terms of product feedback, the simplest way is through
in-app surveys and rating prompts. One mistake app marketers and developers alike
make is pestering their users with a pop-up rating prompt immediately after they Feedback
launch the app for the first time. How will users know whether or not they like the app if
you haven’t given them a chance to use it before asking for a rating?
Ship Learn
Here’s the dilemma: you need app ratings to help increase app store discovery, BUT by
asking at the wrong time you run the risk of racking up poor ratings.

Build Design

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4 Create Feedback Loops

One of the best ways to boost glowing reviews and avoid losing
valuable feedback, is to decide where in the mobile experience the
user is happiest and therefore more willing to leave a 5-star review.
For some apps like HotelTonight, this is after a successful hotel
booking. Prompting a user who just had a seamless experience
booking a low-cost hotel room would be elated to leave 5 stars.
On the other hand, asking someone who has never booked a
room is unlikely to give a high rating, so why ask? If there are no
transactions available, use in-app behavior criteria to decipher
when and where a rating prompt is most relevant. For example,
only sending a rating prompt after a user has launched the app
10 times, over the course of 3 consecutive days. By building a
workflow around a user’s actions, you are selecting a subset of
highly engaged and potentially loyal customers to prompt for a
rating or feedback, unlike the ever-annoying pop-up prompt.

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4 Create Feedback Loops

The Right Way to Prompt Your Users for a Review

If loyal users are not happy with their experience, this is the kind of Enjoying Outlook?
feedback you want to receive directly, and use this to further guide
Not Really Yes!
product iterations. Don’t make your dissatisfied customers resort
to leaving scathing reviews on the App Store. Even if you can’t
stop that particular user from leaving, you can prevent the things
that led to his/her departure from ever occurring again, thereby
eliminating future churn. In-app feedback is also easy to categorize
and organize for developers on the backend. You don’t need a team How about a rating on
to sift through the internet and app stores to see what your users the App Store, then?
want; you have all that information readily available.
No, thanks Ok, sure

When users feel heard and see that their opinions are actually
reflected in product development, they are likely to be more
loyal. It’s like any other human relationship: when we feel like
someone is listening to us, we’re going to up the amount we
talk with them. Listen to your users and they will increase their Would you mind giving
engagement with you. us some feedback?
Ok, sure
No, thanks Ok, sure

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Conclusion
While the reality of a competitive market and a fickle consumer
base may seem daunting, it also opens up a space for innovative
new practices to overcome these obstacles. The app ecosystem
is crowded, but it’s also young; there’s plenty of room for growth.
The most essential part of reducing churn is ensuring that users
stay in-app (obvious, right?). But many companies still treat mobile
as simply another channel, not the nexus of their business. This
disregards the ways in which users interact with mobile, and
4
increases the likelihood that users will abandon the app when they
are forced to switch channels to complete a task or ask for help.
What Forrester terms the “Mobile Mind Shift” is occurring: users
want information and services immediately, from anywhere, and in
context. To beat mobile churn, companies need to meet this need.

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About Helpshift
Helpshift bridges the disconnect between conventional customer service channels like
email and phone support, and a growing consumer base that lives in a mobile-first world.
As consumers do more on their mobile phones and have a strong preference for messaging
as their primary mode of communication, Helpshift’s customer service platform provides
instant answers and messaging right within the mobile app. The Helpshift SDK also easily
integrates with third party tools and allows for highly-personalized support and user
segmentation. Through this highly-streamlined support system, companies can resolve
issues more efficiently, boosting customer satisfaction in the process. Companies such
as Viacom, Virgin Media, Microsoft, Western Union, Flipboard, WordPress, and thousands
of other industry-leading brands, startups, and developers use the Helpshift platform to
provide in-app support. Helpshift is installed on 2 Billion devices worldwide, and serves
400+ million mobile customers monthly. To date, Helpshift has raised more than $38.2
Million and is backed by Cisco Investments, Intel Capital, Microsoft Ventures, Nexus Venture
Partners, Salesforce Ventures, True Ventures, and Visionnaire Ventures. To learn more about
Helpshift, visit https://www.helpshift.com/ and follow @helpshift on Twitter.

Sources:
http://www.slideshare.net/zulmohd1/customer-service-attitude-course
https://solutions.forrester.com/mobile_moments_sg/
https://www.fiksu.com/resources/fiksu-indexes
https://www.helpshift.com/blog/solving-cost-of-acquisition/
http://www.businessinsider.com/app-store-marketing-strategies-and-stats-2015-1
http://andrewchen.co/new-data-shows-why-losing-80-of-your-mobile-users-is-normal-and-that-the-best-apps-do-much-better/
http://blogs.forrester.com/kate_leggett/16-03-03-your_customers_dont_want_to_call_you_for_support

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