Offboarding is important so don’t just turn your back on former customers. I’ve replaced many school systems and the vendors take it personally when they lose a customer. That is short-sighted and creates negative goodwill which will be repeated over and over. Ex-customers are more likely to share war stories than they are to talk about great products. Make the offboarding a positive experience. Companies should…
(1) …work to ensure a smooth transition to the new product and this usually centers around data migration.
(2) …listen to understand why they abandoned their product. You may learn more during the transition period than you did when the customer notified you of their intentions.
(3) …listen to understand why they are adopting the new product. Maybe the value drivers of the product segment are shifting.
(4) …confirm that you are providing a complete set of data that can be easily used by another product. Making migration difficult is rarely a factor in keeping customers.
(5) …be as responsive as when they were a customer. Implementations can be stressful, and waiting for a response can bog down the work.
