How a $650M Cybersecurity Company Found the Real Customer Story Behind the Numbers
With CRM notes, support cases, internal surveys and invoicing details on over 10,000 customers, this global cybersecurity software company had no shortage of customer data. But leadership still couldn’t explain the unexpected rise in churn amongst some customer segments. The company’s VP of Customer Success identified a critical gap in their metrics: not having direct conversations with the customers who had already left.
He brought in IcebergIQ to launch a churn analysis and get a more complete view of why customers were leaving, and what could have been done differently.
Challenge
The company provides firewall, cloud, and data security solutions to thousands of customers in global markets. Its customer base spans annual and multi-year contracts, direct and channel sales, and regions where managed service providers may package and sell its solutions differently. This complexity made understanding churn especially challenging.
With a rise in churn among the smaller account segment, the VP of Customer Success sought to identify the most significant drivers, particularly across their key products. Internally, the team had multiple data sources ranging from support cases to invoicing patterns and customer surveys, but they were still missing the full churn picture.
They wanted a 360-degree view of their customers, to deeply understand reasons for purchase and retention, and to identify which investments they should make to fix underlying issues.
To complete this picture, they needed unbiased feedback and context directly from their former customers.
In this article, you’ll learn:
Churn analysis supports internal data to give you a 360 degree view of your customers
Human conversations give critical depth that AI tools can’t surface
Churn analysis can help justify the right company investments to make
Why IcebergIQ?
The company’s VP of Customer Success had worked with IcebergIQ previously and understood the value of human-led, third-party customer conversations. IcebergIQ was brought in to conduct in-depth churn interviews across North America and EMEA.
The engagement was designed around a “fail fast” mindset: test hypotheses quickly, identify emerging patterns, and build confidence in where the evidence was converging. The initial goal was to complete 15 interviews within the first 45 days.
IcebergIQ combined concise summaries with deeper analysis, giving the company stakeholders the means to quickly understand themes while still accessing the details.
“The entire process with IcebergIQ was very professional and organized. We felt informed and supported throughout”
Results
IcebergIQ results surfaced key themes around how customer relationships were managed and the role of their Customer Success team in covering smaller accounts. These accounts required stronger relationship management and ongoing engagement to support renewals.
Through Iceberg’s churn analysis research, the company was able to identify gaps in their customer data quality. Learnings from direct customer feedback also helped the company justify where larger investments should be made.
In addition, having an actual team of people conducting the interviews and analysis reinforced the value of human conversations in understanding complex customer decisions.
As the company VP of Customer Success says, “there’s real value in having human conversations with your buyers rather than just relying on AI. There are details and nuances you simply can’t get otherwise.”
For a global software company managing tens of thousands of customer relationships, IcebergIQ’s research helped expose some key root causes for churn risk, allowed the team to quickly put an action plan in place.