TLDR;
1. Churn is more threatening than you think.
2. Use churn analysis as an opportunity to fix things, rather than getting dismayed.
Some facts.
It is 5 to 25 times more expensive to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one.
Only 4% of unhappy customers complain.
90% of unhappy customers will leave.
100% of unhappy customers will talk about your business to their friends.
Increasing customer retention rate by 1% increases profits by 5% to 20%.
Bottom line, take churn seriously. The most effective way to understand why customers are churning is by listening to them. Looking at historical data (cohort retention curves, core actions, etc) will help you understand what retained users are doing. This leads to survivorship bias. To truly sustain growth, you must understand non-survivors!
Survivorship bias illustration
Wald (1943) recommended that the Navy reinforce the plane where there were no bullets.
How do you mitigate churn?
- Segment customers and measure churn for the most valuable segments.
- Conduct periodic churn surveys to listen & understand “the why?”
- Build plans to fix problems which are in your control.
- Reward teams who successfully manage churn.
- If possible, build machine learning models to automate churn prediction and be proactive.
Some fun facts…
1. This clay tablet is one of the earliest record of a formal customer complaint. Click here to read the full translationš
2. There is no universal definition of churn rate. This was the basis for the judge dismissing a case against Netflix back in 2004!
If you enjoyed reading so far, you will like these references.
- Customer Churn Management: The Key To Sustainable Margin Growth
- The Value Of Keeping The Right Customers
- Predicting Customer Churn with Amazon Machine Learning
- Prescription for cutting costs
- Turning SaaS Churn Into A Growth Strategy: Changing Our Perspective
- 75 Customer Service Facts, Quotes & Statistics
This is great!