Customer Retention Manager | Job Description

Key Responsibilities: What Does a Customer Retention Manager Do?

Customer retention managers are specialized CS people mainly overseeing processes and metrics directly related to customer retention, loyalty, and churn. A retention manager’s primary role is to ensure accounts are getting the value they’re paying for and thus achieve their goals with the product or service, leading to increased customer stickiness and retention.

A retention manager works with the customer success team to plan and implement data-led strategies to reduce customer churn. They oversee the execution of agreed-upon tactics, engaging with customers before, during, and after the process is complete for that customer.

While increasing customer retention is good, the true goal of a Customer Retention Manager is to foster customer loyalty and build connections with their most loyal clients, leading to long-term, brand-defining business relationships.

Key Responsibilities:

• Planning data-led churn reduction tactics and overseeing implementation in a customer-first manner.
• Monitoring relevant metrics for customer goals and keeping account overviews.
• Creating automated processes for churn precursors and communicating with customers proactively whenever they’re in danger of churning to prevent support issues, foster customer loyalty, and promote good business relationships.
• Analyzing accounts, researching customer behavior, and creating predictive models of the customer journey.
• Reaching out to customers before their respective renewal dates to negotiate contracts.
• Implementing credit card expiration date notifications, dunning emails, direct debit payments, or account updaters to prevent involuntary customer churn.
• Working with expansion and upsell managers (or other CS team members) to create upsell and cross-sell offers that directly address known customer pain points.
• Analyzing churn reasons, creating an offboarding process and checklist, and conducting offboarding interviews to determine why customers are leaving.

Here are the necessary skills to be a good Customer Retention Manager:

• Minimum 2 years of experience in Customer Success or Customer Support. Relevant courses / training are nice-to-have but only required by some job postings.
• Excellent communication skills and the ability to transform customer conversations into business-driving relationships while still managing to serve the customers’ goals as best as possible.
• Advanced knowledge of churn reduction tactics and experience implementing them to save accounts from churning.
• High emotional intelligence and empathy skills.
• Customer service skills.
• Strong analytical and goal-oriented mindset backed by basic-to-advanced project management knowledge.
• Advanced IT&C knowledge and capabilities, experience with automation, and ability to learn new software tools on the job.