A few posts last week discussed Exit and Entrance Criteria for new orders. One of the posts focused on the transition between sales and service activation. The other covered the transition between service activation and billing.
The churn process should also be managed with tightly defined gates between organizations. These gates contain unique information.
- When was the disconnect notice received?
- What notice period is required prior to disconnect?
- What was billing effective date?
- What was term (e.g., 3 year)?
- If still in term, what is early termination fee?
- Is there an off-net circuit?
Using Salesforce.com, Zayo is increasing the visibility of whether this information is gathered and whether it is being effectively used. For example, disconnects shouldn’t be scheduled prior to the notice period being satisfied. If under a term commitment, an Early Termination Fee (“ETLs”) should be billed.
Exit and Entrance Criteria can be used to ensure this information is gathered very quickly. Other reports can be written to ensure disconnects don’t happen prematurely, ETLs are collected, and offnet circuits are disconnected.
These need to be required fields for a disconnect to be “accepted by billing”…we need to determine who has responsibility to fill this out…ideally, this would be done by Brad’s organization, not Alicia’s…if so, we should view it as acceptance criteria for Stage 5…with a separate report built for “Disconnect Entrance Criteria to Service Activation Met?”….and a similar one for “Disconnect Entrance Criteria to Billing Met?”, the latter of which should address only the info that billing requires to process a disconnect….Critical to be precise about what is in each report…for example, several items above might not be required in the billing criteria.
If John agrees with this, perhaps this is something that Jason L. can take the lead on implementing.
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While disconnects are about as fun as a trip to the dentist, having early visibility is extremely important. A disconnect/churn funnel gives us insight into how accounts are being managed. At other companies, I’ve heard account execs say that managing churn takes too much time away from growing the business. I can’t imagine how that would be true – understanding how a customer’s needs change over time seems necessary to be a successful account exec.
Agreed Sandi. Your words are wise. At Zayo, we need to get better at demonstrating our command and control over POTENTIAL disconnects. This is a near term focus of the ZB sales execs.
It has been nearly one year since I retired from Onvoy. Thought I’d check in. I was the Long Distance Product Manager. And spent 35 years in the industry.
“Churn” is a very broad term. But in each instance, the account executive should position to make the best of it. And in all cases, is shouldn’t be a surprise.
The AE should know that a customer is exiting a location, or a line of business. Can’t change a customer’s business. Can alert management to timing. If there is no underlying cost commitment to Zayo, I don’t believe in ETLs in a situation like this. A flexible business partner has a better shot at new/ongoing business if the customer is not punished for changes in their business.
If a customer is disconnecting because they got a better offer, the AE should have known that other offers were being considered. And, what the competition is offering. And be positioned well enough to have been given the opportunity to compete. And have offered the best solution to the customer’s needs.
Bring all advantages to bear. Leverage the operations person who has a good working relationship with your operations people. If it all comes down to price, the AE and the company haven’t done their job.
Much more could be said. But if the customer is choosing another provider because in some way the company has let them down, fall on every sword they hand you and try for a better late than never fix. If that doesn’t do it, and they are determined to leave, tell the customer that you are really sorry that you’ve lost their business. Make their departure as efficient as possible. Because the next step is to try to win back their business.