How to resurrect churning customers in a non-pushy way

James Mulvany

|

CEO & Founder

of

Podcast.co & Radio.co
EP
54
James Mulvany
James Mulvany

Episode Summary

Today on the show we have James Mulvany, founder and CEO of Podcast.co and Radio.co

In this episode, we talked about what drives James to keep building new companies in the content and streaming space, why the podcast industry is still full of untapped potential, and the importance of a personal touch in customer retention.

We also discussed why James thinks world-class customer service is a key to resurrecting churned customers, why social media ads are underrated for retaining customers, and his biggest challenge in tackling Churn and retention.

As usual, I'm excited to hear what you think of this episode, and if you have any feedback, I would love to hear from you. You can email me directly on Andrew@churn.fm. Don't forget to follow us on Twitter.

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Mentioned Resources

Highlights

Time

What drives James to keep building new companies in the content distribution and streaming space. 00:01:45
Why podcast industry is still in a very early stage 00:03:24
James' process to resurrect clients who left. 00:13:00
Why social media is an underrated customer retention channel. 00:12:35
Why podcast industry has less customer churn in general. 00:13:58
How James runs his customer success team. 00:17:53
What has been James' most significant challenge when it comes to churn and retention. 00:20:26

Transcription

Andrew Michael
Hey James, welcome to the show.

James Mulvany
Thanks very much for having me, Andrew. It's a pleasure to be here.

Andrew Michael
It's great. For the listeners. James is the founder and CEO of Radio.co, a live streaming and radio management platform which powers over 4000 channels around the world. James is also the founder of Podcast.co, a platform for podcasts, publishing and distribution. They also have a services layer on top that works with leading brands, agencies, influencers and individuals to help spread the message further using audio. Prior to radio current podcaster code James also founded wave streaming, MCI live, and CD and phi, which they built into living CDN, that they exceeded SSL in May 2017. So my first question for you, James, is there's a clear theme in the companies that you founded, what drives you to keep building new companies in the content distribution and streaming space?

James Mulvany
I think it's always been really exciting. The idea of actually broadcasting yourself and pushing your message out there as it's been one that kind of has always driven me. I really enjoy creating content as well as helping people grow their audiences. So I think that's probably why there's been a running theme. Plus also, you know, it's just one of these things, you fall into a certain sort of trade almost, you learn, you learn all about that trade, you learn all about the industry. And it just makes it easy to spot opportunities, I think,

Andrew Michael
yeah, you become an expert in the domain and from exactly, scratching your own itch from the different problems that come up as a result.

James Mulvany
But then, you know, it's interesting, you say, what prompts you to keep starting businesses because like, as an entrepreneur, that's what you do. And, you know, I've had some successes, I've had some failures, of some really bad failures and some really good successes, you know, so it's one of the things that I sometimes want to start a new company on my own, why am I putting myself through this again, but it's good fun. And, you know, it's part of the challenge and part of that part of the journey, really. And we launched radio code about five years ago and July 2015. After about a year of development. As as we kind of progressed, more and more clients were coming to us saying, you know, we want to start podcasts, or a lot of our clients, obviously radio customers. So it makes sense It's a logical progression for them to have a podcast. So initially, we thought, okay, let's build it into radio.co. But the thing with the podcasting market has grown so much over the last two, three years. It's a really, you know, proper, exciting space to be in at the moment, there's a lot of opportunity there. And I think things are really just getting started. So it made more sense to roll it out as a separate business. Radio co was kind of bootstrapped. And I sort of, you know, effectively privately funded the development that of that from my from my existing business. So we podcast CO, which, where she took on some debt financing, because I was very much aware that you don't want to lose momentum or traction with one product. And also, you know, we have some members of the team who work across both brands, ultimately, with the development I was like, we need a new dev team to build podcast co because, you know, there's so much stuff going on with radio coat, you know, you don't want to sort of end up neglecting it. So it's very, very important to sort of hire new dev team start working on podcast CO and also just expand the marketing and sales and support teams as well. So both products are taken care of And both customer bases are obviously taken care of as well.

Andrew Michael
Yeah. So you sort of started out working together, and then slowly narrowly trying to separate the two and become maker. Yeah.

James Mulvany
Which I mean, it's good because we're all we're all based in the same office, there's about 30 members of the team between both both brands. And there is obviously a lot of crossover. So it's quite exciting being collaborative and and sort of playing, you know, sort of playing with different ideas and discussing how to best promote each product. But I do think, you know, it's good to have people who are devoted to each each product as well, too. So you've got that kind of clear separation, you can kind of keep things moving forward,

Andrew Michael
for sure. And you said as well, like you think like the podcast industry is on its infancy now. Like, I'm interested in what your thoughts are on this show, because I think, like you see every day, new podcasts popping up and a lot of people are tend to think sort of the market is saturated, and how many more podcasts can they be, but why do you feel that this is just the beginning?

James Mulvany
Well, I think there's less than a million podcasts still, you know, if you compare that to a number of faces, pages or YouTube channels, which are in you know, 10s or even hundreds of millions right now less than a million podcasts, there's still so much opportunity there. There's so many people who come to me and say, James, is it too late to start podcast is too saturated. I think that's a small amount. When you think about the internet, in numbers, less than a million is nothing. So that's why I think number one, there's a good opportunity. And certainly, also discoverability is becoming a lot better. I had this conversation with someone the other day where, you know, Google have finally finally hat unveiled their, their sort of landing page for podcasts, if you go to podcast.google.com. It's kind of rubbish at the moment. But what Google do have is huge amounts of technology and processing power. So I think, ultimately, Google's still like the number one discovery engine on the internet for anything. I think podcasts are gonna form a nice part of that, especially once they start and they're doing this already, but it still becomes more and more, you know, intelligent, the way that they can actually transcribe audio into sort of searchable text data and understand what's going on in that podcast. That's gonna be a big game changer for people discovering, of course listen to the listen to numbers are just gonna go up and up. Because of that,

Andrew Michael
definitely I can see that happening, like I use a service to transcribe the episodes afterwards. And it makes it searchable. So you can later then go and search for specific topics and areas. And part of that I think is a super powerful way is like me just searching for like onboarding, for example. And then I come across the 15 or 20 or 30 episodes, every onboarding was mentioned and be able to sort of group and collect those ideas together is really powerful. So I can see that playing out in search really earlier. So the other thing I noticed as well like your businesses, I think they're really set the core fundamental place. So the products that you've built already, like day to day using forex, you can't just set and forget in a way like you need to be on them all the time. Correct. Do you think this has sort of helped you into the type of business you're working when it comes to general attention? Like what are your numbers look like? You don't have to buy specifics, but I mean, do you think this is definitely giving you an edge in When it comes to generate attention, having businesses that are like fundamental to running the companies or the shows that these people use you for,

James Mulvany
I think so one of the things that we noticed very early on with radio.co was people will sign up. And you know, they might be a kind of discovery stage where they're just thinking about starting up, but they're not necessarily ready to commit. So it's important. And then and then obviously, we launched radio.com. And it was kind of brand new to the marketplace, there wasn't a lot of other competing solutions, where now there are more competing solutions. So we've got a offensively people take us for a spin and they'll go elsewhere, they might try competitors products, we provide, you know, the world class customer support. So we find that's a big driver to keep people bringing back but the other thing which we found that has helped massively is just retaining customer data. So when someone hasn't paid they cancel their account, rather than just like saying, Okay, see you later. We're never going to see you again. We assume that that person may want to come back and we keep the data for it. period of time, I think it's 60 days. And, you know, during that 60 day period, we'll just touch base with them not like being sort of high pressure, sort of sales guys, but just basically saying, Listen, you know, we've still got your account data, if you want to reactivate, you can do so. And, you know, you'd be amazed to see the number of people that then say, okay, want to reactivate. But the benefit of that is they've everything they've spent time doing playlists they've created, you know, media files they've uploaded, we've got all of that there. So they don't need to start redoing that all over again. And they can just really, you know, pick up where they left off. And that kind of then says, I think 60 days is long enough where you know, it during that period of time, if they've tried a customer customer support from one of our competitors, and decided that these guys are not very responsive. Let's go back to radio code, which does happen a lot. You know, it allows them to come back and sort of pick up where they left off in it. And that sort of reduces that sort of friction. I think it's really important.

Andrew Michael
For sure. It sounds like an exciting idea. The one thing that sort of triggered to mind as well when you said it now again, is in the context. Have GDPR and like data protection? And how are you communicating this to your users when they're canceling their accounts or deleting to make sure that you're sort of in compliance with GDPR? And their data rights? Uh hum. You know, let's not go there.

James Mulvany
I'm not an intellectual property expert, I don't want to send it in, it's gonna land us in trouble. I'm pretty sure we've got it on our terms and conditions. And obviously, we we, I think he's probably in the cancellation email that we keep it there, but I don't wanna really get into GDPR his topic is just absolutely not.

Andrew Michael
Yeah, I think as a concept that's very, very interesting in terms of trying to win back customers is that we often just lose them and forget about them. And I think resurrection itself is very, very difficult in just in the nature that someone's made up their mind to actively quit and leave your product. Trying to win them back is is difficult, but like you say, in the nature of going out to trying something else and then realizing Okay, I maybe I made a mistake, I need to go back having that sort of slate and ready to get up and running can be very, very powerful, motivated to win the check as well.

James Mulvany
Yeah, I think it depends again on the kind of platform you're running with, you know, the SAS model. It's great, you've got Predictable Revenue, etc. But then ultimately, I think a lot of companies forget that there's not there's more than one solution out there and customers don't necessarily make their mind up. You know, on day one, you need to remind people that you're still around. Sometimes we've seen customers who have kind of inquired and then they've not actually signed up for like a couple to three months sometimes. And this is where I think retargeting comes into play, because, you know, one of the things we've always been big on is content, we like to deliver value to the marketplace as a whole and build good goodwill in the in the kind of the market if you like, because I think that helps with with brand awareness. But also, you know, let's say someone's thinking about starting a radio project. Well, it's not it's not generally like a decision you make on a Tuesday afternoon, right? It's, it's something you might think about for a couple of months, you might not you might have the idea that you'd like to do that but not really have fully grasp full grasp over the concept that you want to create. So you know, Using retargeting, making sure you're delivering constant value to the marketplace really helps people. It helps solidify your brand in people's minds and keep

Andrew Michael
it online. Yeah, we actually talked about this recently with Nathan Barry from ConvertKit. And they obviously they have an email marketing service that helps you to build lists and target users and create landing pages. Yeah, I'm very much I sort of figured out as well, like they had this huge amount of people sort of coming in trying to test out the product. So just curiosity, but then when really ready for it. So they started to build on services on top like the landing page to be able to create to start collecting and I can definitely see it in your case as well when it comes to radio, or podcasts or Craven people out of curiosity want to start checking out what's in the market what's going on before they actually even ready to get started.

James Mulvany
Again, you know, interestingly, I've actually started using ConvertKit for my personal brand, we use a few different other services for radio podcasts, but good experience and you know, they've done a really good job in terms of providing value with it. They have lots of in app messaging, which sort of prompts you to do certain things. So yes, it's quite cool product. And I think, you know, email marketing, again, is a really powerful thing. It's still still very relevant. Obviously, your open rates and stuff aren't as good as they were, like, five, six years ago. But this is why I think you need to take more of a cross platform strategy, you know, look at delivering video via socials and stuff as well. You know, when we launch Radio dotco email marketing was sort of still King or as I think less so now perhaps, you know, you can stay in touch with people who have been on your site using things like retargeting and being more intelligent about your your pay per click strategy. So one of the sort of mythologies we're adopting at the moment for advertising is, you know, rolling out video as ads just to kind of engage with those sort of top funnel type people. You know, they might be interested in your product they might been to your site once and then bouncing going elsewhere. Well, if you show content is relevant to them, or relevant to your business. And then you see that they're engaging with it. You know, Facebook allows you to actually profile an audience based on people who have watched x percentage of your videos. So you know, those people immediately are engaged. Right. And I think that's that's such a powerful strategy because you don't need to really know who that person is you don't need to have their email address or have their contact details. But ultimately, you'll end up getting that if you're showing them more and more relevant content,

Andrew Michael
for sure. And I think it's very very underutilized channel when it comes to general retention is actually sort of using social channels and using even ads like Facebook for engagements and updates because I think like you said, like, email is definitely it's one channel but it's saturated to a large extent, but at the same time as well as like you. If you basically just basing your strategy just on email, and you only choosing one channel where people are consuming information and data and might not be an individual's preference there might really be wanting to consume the news or updates. In social channels or in things like LinkedIn, so

James Mulvany
yeah, I think the main important thing to think about when it comes to journeys, just because someone has canceled their account, does not mean you have lost them as a customer for good.

Andrew Michael
Yeah, I think it's always it's a tough one. And I think like when we think about general retention, the biggest opportunities are always I think people gravitate towards onboarding, and working on new customers, because I think once you sort of get to that point where someone's made up their mind around your customer like, and they've actively decided to quit, it's a lot harder to turn their psychology around the news to try and exciting new person who just arrived your product image. Oh,

James Mulvany
yeah, I mean, but I think, you know, this is the thing, I think, of course, you've got to look at you've got to nurture your new leads. Definitely. But But then, as I say, just because someone's cancelled it I know. I know. He's saying it's hard to turn the psychology around. But then, you know, I think I think that that people maybe just don't think about that because, you know, it's certainly relevant for radio CO and interestingly On the flip side, we podcast co Let's still relatively young as a business, we're seeing a lot less churn. You know, I think because once someone's got their podcast set up, they they kind of just tend to leave it. Whereas with radio, you know, quite a lot people that will be kind of a project they sort of come back to.

Andrew Michael
Yeah, I think with podcasts, it's quite a difficult one to turn I think is also because the the unknowns as well as what happens like moving and switching between providers and yeah, every website states that they do do it, but you're never quite sure like how it's going to impact distribution and listens. And so I think it's almost one of the ones we got it out of fear.

James Mulvany
Yeah, let me cut it if it if it's not broken, don't fix it kind of mentality. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.

Andrew Michael
Yeah, good point. I had a case like this recently with my provider who mentioned any names but they're they're really bad email that was sent out when a credit card was declined. And what happened was, I had my company account, I got a new card for it. And then the month went and I'd forgot to update it on the hosting provider. And I received an email notification to say that That your account has been suspended. And your data will be deleted in 30 days. If you do not update, you're coordinating that. So you can imagine like I sort of panicked immediately thinking, Okay, shifts now is like the podcast, not that or people not able to access the content. I think this was even on the day. And then actually, I reached out to the supports next to me, no, that's not the case. You just need to update their account in the next 30 days before but I think one incomes was really, really bad. But even in that moment, I was thinking, Okay, like, I really need to switch because this is just not on luck. What the only but even at that moment, I was thinking, okay, but what are the switching costs? And I think that's going back to the point is having one of these, this is where your fundamental component of the person's business, it's very, very difficult to just sort of uproot yourself and move.

James Mulvany
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, as we say, it's kind of like the Holy Grail. If you're building a SaaS platform, the more and more you can kind of become ingrained with what the person is doing a customer, the more likely they are to stay. So obviously, this is a good benefit as a business to doing that. And it's interesting you say that because like I think there's two, there's two different ways you can kind of go go for like cancellations, or trying to deal with with people who have perhaps missed a payment. You know, like, ultimately, sometimes if you kind of send them an email that's a bit shocked, shocking, and kind of, you know, opens their eyes. Sometimes it has more effect. And it can you no problem to prompt the user to actually take action. So I don't want to lose my service. I best put my card details in. But it's interesting, you say that it actually had the reverse effect with you kind of rubbed up the wrong way. And actually, well, I have this guy's just been, you know, kind of aggressive with this.

Andrew Michael
Yeah. Yeah, I think you've got to think about the context is always coming from like, I got a new car that I just completely forgot to update. It's not like I didn't want to pay for the service or fight or the flip. If it was the case where I didn't have money. It's like, Okay, this person is maybe obviously struggling and now you sort of like kind of cut them off. They I think it's I don't think anybody actively says I don't want to go and pay for service. I'm just going to see how I can get a free ride for as long as possible. So I think like

James Mulvany
I think I'm sure it happens sometimes. But you know, yeah, I guess. Oh, you mean, I think, I think ultimately customers are really important. And I think, you know, again, there's opportunity there, which is why customer success in our, in our products is really important. We try and deliver as much value as possible. When we're when we're speaking to people, we actually give people the time of day, they can book a call with us, or book a demo, you know, because I think it makes a big difference between customers that are happy and more likely to stay. Like let's say, if someone doesn't understand, like one feature, they get confused with it. Well, if you give them it, rather than just directing them to a, you know, help desk article, which sometimes is fine. But if you actually show them how to use that feature, and kind of hold their hand through that it can make the difference between that customer than being a customer for a couple of months, versus a couple of years.

Andrew Michael
And how are you doing that? Is that one to one conversations or?

James Mulvany
Yeah, so we use sort of a standard calendar booking system and we'll take either phone calls or video calls, we don't have like an incoming number that that clients can call because we just tried that in the past, we just find it gets too crazy. Because we are, you know, relatively small team. So we allow customers to book time with with either customer success or technical support. And, you know, it does help again, especially in those early days when someone's new to the platform. They're trying to get their heads around everything. And actually that there's obviously going to be some learning curve for clients. And you can provide all the resources and training materials in the world, sometimes actually, having that call with someone just makes a huge difference.

Andrew Michael
Absolutely. I think having sort of that personal texture, it's either putting like a voice or a face, in some cases, to the brand and to the company. Definitely goes a long way in sort of building their brand loyalty as well.

James Mulvany
Yeah. And also we, we try and take on people who are passionate about the topic. So we're really lucky because we're based in Manchester and there's three universities here and one of them has a course called tip television radio. So From that course, we've had so many interns, we've hired quite a few staff. And we also take part in actually delivering one of the lectures for the radio module as well, which is cool. But that's, you know, we've got we've got a kind of readily available source of, you're really sort of passionate members of staff from that course who kind of understand the radio and podcasting or audio production thing, if that makes sense. And as a result, there's so there's so much happier to speak to clients about their ideas, and they understand what clients actually want versus someone who's just perhaps a word in a generic customer service role for different industry, if that makes sense. So So I think, I think, again, having people who are kind of passionate in your team, it stands for a lot.

Andrew Michael
Yeah, we spoke about this recently as well. I think we deserve a lead and also Julie Hogan from drift and reserves from appsflyer. Like some in the early days, having somebody who's really keen motivated like energetic enthusiastic about the topic. goes a long, long way in serving the customer as well. So it's not just another job. It's more like, this is my passion. And yeah, see how I can help my customers better?

James Mulvany
Yeah. And also, it's just as a deeper understanding of the customer. What's going on in the customers mind, I guess.

Andrew Michael
Yes, having empathy. It rules. Yeah. So we haven't running a little bit short on time. But I want to ask you sort of running now the different companies that you've been going through over the years, what has been like the biggest challenge that you've had to face when it came to general attention? And you can pick any company? And then how did you sort of work your way through that with the team and with the company?

James Mulvany
I think the main differences that I've just talked about when we used to run wave streaming, which was similar to radio co serve the similar market, it was not as much of a platform versus you know, we sold a lot of different tools, and it was more like b2b, whereas radio.co is a mix of b2b and b2c. We learned a lot of lessons, I think from that and how we dealt with customers, how we dealt with churn and retention, all that sort of thing. And back then, you know, I said to you now, you know, encouraging customers to come back has has been a big, big sort of a game changer for radio. Okay, back then, you know, like we counseled clients and from our perspective, we really sort of had to shift our mindset because back then it was like, okay, you cancelled you know, no customer See you later,

Andrew Michael
you know. So that I think has been a big lesson learned. And also just stuff like retaining the data because we bought them, we'd have clients who wouldn't pay for services, and then they would get cuts off and we wouldn't pay. And then we had complained, because the data was obviously all missing. And then of course, we would get them back as a customer. So those things I'd say were the biggest challenges back then. And that's kind of how we overcame them. Nice. And then the question I asked everyone that joins the show, is let's imagine a hypothetical scenario now that you've joined in your company, and you've been tasked to try and turn churn and retention around it's not doing great, and you've been asked to try and get some results quick. You have 90 days to try and turn things around or to To show some traction, what would be some of the first things you'd want to do at this company in the first 90 days?

James Mulvany
Okay, so first of all, I would try and run a survey, and just just generally ask some questions around what customers felt about the service, they're receiving the product itself, you know, just try and get a feel for what the general vibe was from the audience. I would then try and have some conversations with people who had asked who would answer the survey, either in like a very positive light or a very negative light. So, you know, try and find out what the people who answered in a positive way, what do they like about platform what's what is he doing? Well, what's good about the customer service, obviously, then you can get some good, valuable feedback from people who said, No, this isn't working for me, I don't like this, this and this. And, you know, I think that would be the first thing I would attempt to do. Also, you know, implementing better communication, making everything more personable, you know, showing people's faces on your chat widget within you know, intercom or whatever you're using within the app, I think is a really cool thing to do. You know, having Some kind of names at the bottom of your emails, just little things like that details where customers know they're actually speaking to a person. And that's the sort of stuff I would look at to begin with. Then also, you know, look at the metrics, dive into, you know, who your churn rate, dive into, you know, look at the growth metrics of your monthly recurring revenue, and just try and get a really good understanding of what's going on there. And how and try and sort of draw some parallels between what the figures are showing and what's going on in the customers minds, because I think they're always going to be connected, right?

Andrew Michael
Yeah. So you're taking back sort of a qualitative quantitative approach and trying to holistically understand what the problem is. I like the fact as well that you mentioned sort of that making yourself more personal and really making sure that you're putting in faces and names to the company. I think I'm sure it stands for a lot, you know, yeah, we're, we often forget I think you mentioned it, just before the show, but you want to be like hands off and then realizing sort of this, you actually need to create these one to one connection. Right, this brand and this empathy towards customers,

James Mulvany
I think as well, it just it's just how the internet is more like 10 years ago, when I kind of was getting started, there was very much just like this perception that if you bought services from a website, it was just this anonymous website, you didn't have contact details for them or you know, you might have an email address. And you know, you got through to a generic Help Desk. And there was very much just like that perception in the industry, a lot of stuff for industry about them was very much like that. I think nowadays, there's a lot more personality and branding, generally of software companies online, and also, you know, a desire to provide you know, better customer services, and also make your processes more efficient.

Andrew Michael
Yeah, absolutely. I think also maybe comes down to trust as well like, the internet as well. I think for a lot of people. It's now entering definitely not in Trainspotting, early majority. And at this point, like people want a more complete product. They want to feel that they can trust what they're investing in

James Mulvany
here. Trust trust 10 years ago, men having a big badge on your site and said we are you Using a secure connection, right? That was the idea of trust, trust now is is showing, you know, what you're capable of help how you're capable of helping the customer and and taking them on their journey and really solving their problems.

Andrew Michael
Yeah, it's actually being trustworthy now. I'm not just talking about it. Yeah, absolutely. Well, James, it's been a pleasure having you on the show today is any final thoughts you want to leave the listeners with in a way that can keep you up to speed with what you're working on?

James Mulvany
Yeah, of course. So if anyone wants to connect with me on LinkedIn, my name is James Mulvaney. And one of the things I do on LinkedIn is a weekly, live show every Wednesday, lunchtime, co working lunch, where we speak to different people who are, you know, in business in marketing, and really the idea is they bring three concepts to the table around the idea of growing your business, growing your team, or growing your audience. I'm also on Instagram, Twitter, etc. If you search for my name James Mulvaney one of the things I've been doing this year is really trying to focus and grow my personal brand. So I'm trying to push out as much useful content as I can and help as many people as possible.

Andrew Michael
Excellent. I just sent a request now on LinkedIn to connect.

James Mulvany
All cheers, Andrew, thanks very much for having me on the show. It's been really interesting.

Andrew Michael
Yeah, thanks a lot. And I wish you best of luck now going forward. Okay, cheers.

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James Mulvany
James Mulvany
About

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My name is Andrew Michael and I started CHURN.FM, as I was tired of hearing stories about some magical silver bullet that solved churn for company X.

In this podcast, you will hear from founders and subscription economy pros working in product, marketing, customer success, support, and operations roles across different stages of company growth, who are taking a systematic approach to increase retention and engagement within their organizations.

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