Just like its name, a portmanteau of the words - "PowerPoint" and "Cartoon" - Powtoon was to be a simple solution to a complex problem. Co-founder Daniel Zaturansky wanted businesses to be able to create high-quality videos without breaking a sweat. Or their piggy banks.
Thus the visual communication company was born. First, only as a simple landing page, before adulting into a solution for 30 million people worldwide and 96% of the Fortune 500.
Powtoon's business proposition is velocity. Its quick DIY experience could help millions make instant videos. It was only natural that the company would apply that same velocity to its growth. And as they scaled, so did their customer churn troubles.
Hyperfast Growth Led to Hyperfast Churn
Some among the millions of Powtoon customers only need a one-off video or occasionally need to fulfill video requests. After customers got what they thought they needed, they'd quickly cancel online without the opportunity to explore other use cases for video making. The company struggled to educate customers and increase their LTV.
The team tried implementing a simple exit survey on their cancellation page but needed a better way to re-engage customers. In their original cancel flow, users canceling for any reason could only be prompted to contact support.
"We wanted to show customers that Powtoon could meet their needs long-term, but we weren't reaching customers at the right time or place," said Daniel. "We tried email and messaging, but we weren't cutting through the noise, and our win-backs were low, and our exit survey was elementary."
The Inflection Point: A Cancel Flow Upgrade to Bump the Save Rate by 63%
When Powtoon realized the point of cancellation was a sincere opportunity to educate, re-engage, empathize with, and retain customers, they onboarded Chargebee Retention (formerly Brightback).
With the help of Chargebee Retention, Powtoon upgraded its static cancel page into a dynamic, engaging cancel flow. It meant understanding each customer's specific reason to cancel, deploying appropriate messaging, and presenting them with offers to stay that were relevant to their cancellation reasons.
The results were dramatic. The introduction of Chargebee Retention to their cancel flow helped Powtoon improve its customer save rate from 8% to 13% at the point of cancellation (a 63% increase).
Powtoon's Deflection Funnel
Making retention a team-sport
A big part of Powtoon's success now comes from its holistic customer retention stack. By connecting their customer management tools with Chargebee Retention, Powtoon provides white-gloved assistance and can ensure their customers keep deriving long-term value from their product compared to one-time purchases.
Today, whenever a customer visits the hosted Chargebee Retention cancel page, they're added to their Watch List for 30 days to analyze their cancel intent further. These customers are automatically flagged in Powtoon's customer support tool, enabling agents to reach out quickly with a personalized offer to stay. Powtoon's team attributes this new workflow to their increased save rate.
Powtoon Customizes Offers for their Customers
All retention decisions made are data-driven
Chargebee Retention's seamless integrations with existing tools helped Powtoon monitor and improve business-critical metrics beyond save rate. For example, Chargebee Retention also integrated with their billing tool to help Daniel and the team analyze saved and lost revenue, cancel reasons, and offer acceptance rates.
Chargebee Retention also employed save validation, confirming that a customer marked "saved" post a deflection instance is still paying by cross-examining data from their billing tool at a future date.
"Data in Chargebee Retention provides great value to the team. Not only are we taking customer inputs and tailoring offers to their feedback, but we're also taking the data back to our product team so that they can improve our product, processes, and overall customer success," Daniel added.
With Chargebee Retention's customer intelligence, Powtoon can validate its customer success initiatives and strategically allocate budgets every time they implement new initiatives. The team also found the insights and confidence to optimize their product emails further, so customers see the potential of Powtoon to solve more of their needs. Catching customers at the right time, gathering the churn data, and improving customer engagement have created greater customer stickiness.
"You can save more customers if you have more knowledge. Now we see and solve problems before our customers permanently cancel. No tricks or dark patterns, just a better customer experience for everyone," Daniel said.
Headquarters
Stanmore, UK
Products Used
Chargebee Retention