Maximizing Customer Retention: Automate Your Renewal Process

Hi there!

I'm Estee from Struto.

In this lesson, we'll explore how to automate your renewal process using HubSpot.

First, let's cover the basics of identifying which parts of your renewal process can be automated.

This can help save time, reduce errors, and ensure a smooth experience for your customers.

Let's define what we mean by the renewal process.

This is the sequence of steps that a customer goes through to renew their subscription or contract with your business.

It often involves several touchpoints, such as reminders, invoicing, and follow-ups.

A touchless renewal process could include sending out initial reminders, providing renewal options and pricing, receiving customer confirmation, processing payments and updating the customer's status and subscription details in your CRM.

If your account managers drive your renewal process, it could include identifying an upcoming renewal, scheduling a call with the customer to discuss the renewal, creating and sending an updated agreement, receiving a signed agreement back from the client, and notifying your accounts team.

Your renewal process might be completely unique or just slightly different, so it's important to start by mapping out your renewal process.

Start by identifying the steps in your renewal process and document these steps in a flowchart tool, like Lucidchart or Miro.

This helps you visualise the process.

Next, review this with the other stakeholders in your organisation who have insights into what the process is.

Once you've documented the current process, take the opportunity to improve on it by making changes to it.

Map out what your ideal process is and review this with stakeholders in your organisation to get buy-in and sign-off.

Now you have a documented process to automate!

Next, let's identify which of these tasks are repetitive and time-consuming. These are the prime candidates for automation.

In the first process I've described, we can see several options, like sending out renewal reminders, following up with unresponsive customers, confirming receipt of payment or updating customer records.

In the second, Account Manager-driven process, you could create a renewal deal 60 days before the renewal date, send notifications out to your Account Managers, send an automated email with a meeting link asking your customer to book a meeting with their Account Manager or even create tasks for your account managers to give your customer a call to discuss the renewal.

If your renewal process differs, review where you think you can automate steps and work on those. Focus on steps that are repetitive, time-consuming or where there's a risk of human error.

For example, identifying when a renewal is due could be time-consuming, and someone could miss an upcoming renewal. Sending renewal reminders manually can be repetitive and someone could send the wrong email to the wrong customer.

Automating these tasks can free up your time and ensure consistency. HubSpot’s tools can seamlessly handle many of these.

In HubSpot, workflows can be set up to automate emails, tasks, and data updates. For the renewal process, you can create workflows to automatically send reminder emails, create deals, and update records based on customer actions.

Automating your renewal process with HubSpot can save you time and ensure a smoother customer experience.