churn rate
Churn rate tracks how many customers or how much revenue a company loses over time—crucial for understanding retention and sustainable growth.
Churn rate measures how much of your customer base—or recurring revenue—you lose over a given period. It’s not just a metric. It’s a leak. And left unchecked, that leak silently kills growth. You can’t scale what you can’t keep. And churn shows you exactly how much traction you’re losing.
The rate is usually expressed monthly or annually, as a percentage of lost customers or revenue relative to the starting total. While customer churn counts individuals, revenue churn captures dollar impact—often more revealing for B2B and SaaS businesses.
Where churn shows up and changes the game
A SaaS platform loses 4% of its users each month. At first glance, growth looks fine. But after running the numbers, the team sees that replacing churned users takes half the marketing budget. Worse, many churned accounts were high-revenue clients. The growth story cracks.
In another case, a fintech app celebrates 100K users—but loses 30% every month. The churn rate reveals the problem: great acquisition, weak retention. The team rebuilds onboarding, adds support, and improves feature adoption. Fixing churn is what turns noise into signal.
What people get wrong about churn rate
Some teams only track user count, ignoring revenue mix. But losing one large account can hurt more than 50 smaller ones. Others average churn across segments, hiding where the problem really lives. Granular churn by cohort, plan, or channel gives real clarity.
Another mistake: treating churn as a CX issue only. Often, it’s strategic. Wrong-fit customers churn faster. Poor pricing accelerates drop-off. Fixing churn isn’t just support—it’s positioning, product, and process.
You can’t grow past what you can’t retain
Churn rate tells you how fast you’re bleeding—quietly. It’s the most unforgiving metric in growth. Because every new customer you add has to outrun the ones you’re losing. Great companies don’t just fill the bucket. They fix the holes first. That’s how real growth compounds.
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