Not being recognized for your hard work sucks.

One time, I spent months building a new dashboard feature for my customers. I did everything right. Beta tested it. Polished the UI. Had proper (internal and external) marketing around the launch.

But… nothing happened.

Churn rate didn’t budge. New customers didn’t come flooding in. Even the internal “nice work!” messages felt empty.

So I started to do what every entrepreneur does: brainstorm the next big feature that'll finally make them stick around.

Spoiler: that didn’t work either. 

Research from Harvard Business Review shows that companies with the highest retention rates aren't constantly shipping new features. They're making customers feel successful with what already exists.

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When Danielle Simpson finished her last English lesson of the day, she still had two hours of unpaid work ahead of her: writing personalized feedback for each student.

It wasn’t particularly exciting, but definitely made an impact on them. She couldn’t just stop doing it.

The same encouraging phrases. The same grammar corrections, over and over again.

“Great job with pronunciation today, but remember to use 'a' before consonant sounds…”

If you've ever done client work, you know this feeling. The repetitive tasks that eat uptime but don't move the needle.

Simpson’s (business and life) partner, Arvid Kahl, watched her burn out night after night. Being a programmer, he built something simple: a browser tool that let teachers select from feedback templates, and automate the output. 

Really, it was just a basic time-saver for ESL teachers like Simpson. But it worked.

They had a good product. Teachers were saving hours, and revenue was growing steadily toward $20k MRR.

It was going well. Then, it started going great.

Kahl started showing teachers exactly how much time they were saving. Not just a blanket “congrats, you’re more efficient now.” More like “you’ve automated 847 feedback sessions this month” and “you’ve saved 23 hours of unpaid admin work.”

Specific numbers. Tangible wins.

Teachers started screenshotting their stats. Sharing them in Facebook groups. Telling other teachers about the exact hours they'd reclaimed from tedious feedback writing.

FeedbackPanda grew from $20k to $55k MRR in two years, almost entirely through word-of-mouth. At the end of those two years, they were acquired. The biggest selling feature?

How few of their customers churned.

Retention didn’t come from shipping new features. It came from reinforcing customers’ wins. Every time teachers used it, they felt lighter, faster, more in control.

The progress feeling was:

When people hear the words “customer retention,” they either:

Don’t do that. The highest-impact retention strategy takes 90 minutes and costs nothing.

You're going to manually celebrate 10 customers' progress, measure their response, then decide if it's worth automating.

Log into your analytics platform and look for your most active users. 

If you use Google Analytics, go to Audience > User Explorer and export active users from the past 30 days. 

If you use Mixpanel, navigate to Insights > Users and filter by “Active in last 30 days.”

Or, if you sell a product, export your customer list from your payment processor (Stripe, PayPal) and sort by repeat purchasers or highest usage.

For each power user, calculate their tangible progress using your internal data. “You've processed 847 invoices” or “Your team saved 12 hours on reporting.” 

Make it specific, personal, and tied to the core functionality of your product.

Use a simple calculator or spreadsheet to convert usage metrics into time saved, money earned, or efficiency gained.

Write 10 personalized emails or texts (dependent on how you typically communicate with your customers). 

Template: “Hey [Name], just noticed you've [specific achievement] this month. That's [time/money saved or efficiency gained]. Thought you should know you're crushing it.”

Keep each message under 50 words, specific, and genuine.

Send all 10 messages within the same day.

You’ll want to keep track of this, so create a simple Google Sheet with the following columns: 

I wanted to make this easy, so I created the template for you.

Check responses over the 48 hours following your outreach.

At least 3-4 positive responses, potential testimonials, and clear data on whether this kind of progress celebration resonates with your customers.

If it doesn’t, you can experiment with other achievements.

The specific feedback you get from celebrating your customers will tell you if it’s worth investing in this further.

If 3+ customers respond positively, share your message, or mention feeling appreciated in follow-up conversations, then consider building an automated customer progress dashboard. 

Tools like Intercom ($39/month) or Customer.io ($150/month) can track key usage metrics and trigger celebration emails when customers hit specific milestones. 

Use your manual process as a template, then create a system that continuously reinforces customer wins without manual effort. Before you know it, you’ll have created an ongoing retention engine.

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