Blog | Hatch

5 Reasons Why Churned Hatch Customers Return

Written by Kristen McCormick | July 9, 2024


Customers fire us.

🫢

And for all kinds of reasons.

Churn is a normal part of business. Churning and returning, on the other hand, is not—but it's something we regularly see here at Hatch.

In this post, we want to dive into the reasons why—not to be vindictive, but because theses  reveal truths about the SaaS, sales, and service space that are valuable knowledge for anyone.

Our hope is that if you're a churned customer, you may reconsider; if you're a prospective or current customer, that you’ll feel more confident in your decision; and if you're none of those, you will continue reading because there’s a lot to learn. 

Let's dig in.

5 reasons why churned Hatch customers come back

Customers leave us for different reasons, all in an effort to make the best decision for their business at the time. For some of them, it is the right decision. For others, they find that the ROI they get from Hatch is well worth it, and they return. Here are those reasons.


1. They couldn't build it themselves

The solution that Hatch has provided is simple: automate your outreach.

And when prospects or customers see this, they think “Hey, we can build this on our own and save a lot of money.”

The thing is, it’s only simple because we’ve worked hard to build a platform that makes it simple for you.

You have to consider:

  • Integration. Without direct integration to your CRM or lead sources, you’re spending hours manually building lists, importing them, and constantly having to update them.
  • Messaging infrastructure. Hatch is text-led, but you’ll never hear us saying “text-only.” Multichannel communication is imperative for customer satisfaction and conversion; it’s just that text gets the initial response. If you want to build your own version of Hatch, it needs to incorporate text, email, and voicemail, and contain all of that correspondence in one thread.
  • Continuous automation: Keep in mind that Hatch automation isn’t just a one-off message. Message campaigns are 7-14 days long, there are multiple campaigns firing at once, and your audiences are constantly being updated as your contacts’ behavior changes.

  • Maintenance. Building it is one thing. Maintaining it as your database expands and as your technical needs shift is another. 

In short, building a list builder and a messaging infrastructure is expensive and incredibly hard. People leave us, attempt to do it on their own, and then usually come back after about six months.

2. Compliance was a mess

TCPA enforcement, related to text messaging in particular, has ramped up over the past two years. All businesses that use a 10-digit number to text must now go through a rigorous registration process and are subject to ongoing vetting.

Spam filters are ultra sensitive, and messages that merely look like spam are getting blocked. A texting provider interfaces with the mobile carriers for you and are getting blocked.

Customers return to us because as a communication platform:

And this is not the case with every text messaging provider. In fact, several A2P texting platforms have gone out of business because they couldn’t adapt to the changes.

Hatch has emerged as a leader in the space. We’ve organized compliance requirements for you into this spreadsheet. Yes, it’s a spreadsheet because it has five separate checklists for a total of 38 items.

From a compliance standpoint, any money you save from managing customer communication on your own is likely to get canceled out by how much time it takes for you to make sure you're covering all 38 items for every campaign in the above checklist, as well as monetary fees for violating the TCPA, or opportunities missed because your messages were blocked.

3. Hatch AI solved their bandwidth problems

Customers sign on with us because they don’t have the bandwidth to keep up with leads and customers. Great - this is what Hatch is for. Our product makes sure every contact gets the proper outreach, with the right messaging at the right time.

This results in a hike in response rates. Now in theory, because Hatch is doing the heavy lifting required to get those responses, our customers now have the time to engage with those increased responses. But this isn’t always the case.

As a result:

  1. The outreach messages are going out instantly.
  2. The customer is then responding.
  3. But then the rep, who is now handling several responders at once, is now taking anywhere from 15 minutes to multiple days to reply back.

As a result, the customer gets a poor experience and the business can’t translate those increased response rates into increased appointments, sales, and revenue.

Our answer to this is Hatch AI. Now, instead of a human rep jumping in to engage with the responses, your custom AI bot does it for you—all according to your sales processes and brand voice. They collect information to schedule appointments, qualify leads, and route to humans when needed. Their response time is 5 seconds and their service demeanor doesn't skip a bit, no matter how many conversations they are handling.

Our customers’ bots handled 11,134 conversations in June and are on track to handle 13K in July. They’re saving this one call center 48 hours a week and $64,00 a year.

In short, you don’t need to hire on more reps or have a CSR team in order to reach a positive ROI on Hatch. Nor do you need to worry about losing your job if you are an existing team member. We are finding, time and time again, that reps are using their AI bots to do the repetitive work and heavy lifting, which frees them up to do more strategic (and satisfying) work—often time leading to promotions.

4. The support was worth it

At the end of the day, businesses find that having a messaging expert partner is worth the ROI.

Our support department has also expanded recently, with additional Account Managers, Onboarding Managers, and a Solutions Architect, all under our new Head of Onboarding and Account Management.

In addition, we’ve enhanced our suite of customer resources to include a weekly newsletter email with Hatch-specific tips and templates, bi-weekly webinars with how-tos, demos, and Q&As, and regular product updates and announcements.

View our webinar page to see upcoming webinars.

5. They couldn't find an equivalent AI

Circling back to reason #1. We have yet to find someone who can build and maintain a Hatch equivalent. And with our AI capabilities, it’s now virtually impossible.

People have tried to achieve what Hatch AI achieves using ChatGPT or other vendors, but have failed. Our AI pulls from a combination of LLMs, our own proprietary data, and your custom instructions and data, resulting in accuracy and control unlike any other customer-interfacing AI out there. And with integrations like our new ServiceTitan calendar integration, you can achieve a truly hands-free experience.

Do what’s best for your business

Now, this doesn’t encompass all of the reasons customers leave us. And of course, there are other reasons for which they leave us and don’t return. But what it all comes down to is, you’re trying to do what’s best for your business. We get it—we part ways with tools we use for that reason too.

But what we’re trying to say is in some cases, customers do end up finding that staying with Hatch was the best thing for their business. Because any money they saved by not using Hatch gots canceled out by the time spent trying to build and maintain something that didn’t work, the wasted spend on leads that didn’t convert, or the revenue lost to missed opportunities or poor customer experiences.

If you’re a former customer that’s reconsidering Hatch, we invite you to book some time with us here.

If you’re a current customer with questions or requests, you can reach out to your Account Manager here.

And if you’re not yet a Hatch customer, we encourage you to schedule a demo with us here or try Hatch AI yourself.