SaaStr

MAY 10, 2025

A good playbook for customer success is all about driving retention, expansion, and customer happiness while making it scalable: Hire Truly Product-Savvy Customer Success Managers at First Focus on hiring people who customer-focused product nerds to start. Focus on Net Retention Net retention is the ultimate metric for customer success.

Sales Hiring 236

Sales Hiring Customer Success Scale Retention 236

SaaStr

APRIL 26, 2021

Everyone seemingly became an expert in churn. Your churn rate should be 0.123909% per month. Churn is not a GAAP metric. In fact, Christoph Janz had a great post a ways back noting how even public companies define churn differently. But they excluded churn in the first 60 days. It should be net negative.

Churn 280

Churn Retention Metrics B2B 280

SaaStr

JULY 26, 2022

But beyond all the other Pros and Cons of SMB vs enterprise, there’s one looming issue with SMB SaaS: Churn. Endemic churn. The type of churn you almost can’t do anything about. Net net, most true SMB SaaS products often churn on the order of 3% per month almost no matter what you do. And measuring it.

SMB 363

SMB Churn Payment Services SaaS 363

SaaStr

MAY 28, 2025

Building a commission plan for Account Managers (AMs) is a bit different than for AEs (Account Executives) because AMs are typically focused on retention, expansion, and upsells rather than net-new sales. The key is to align their incentives with the outcomes you want: happy customers, low churn, and growing accounts.

Scale 186

Scale Management Churn Finance 186

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 26, 2025

Third, contracts mitigate churn rates because the customer is only making a renewal decision once per year, instead of 12x per year. ” The company grew from $15M in ARR to more than $1B with this model, consistently achieving better than 130% net dollar retention. First, revenue becomes much more predictable.

SaaS Payments 283

SaaS Payments Pricing Strategy Scale 283

SaaStr

AUGUST 25, 2020

Q: What is more important, getting new customers or customer retention? It’s a trick question, of course — the crazy high net negative churn of top SaaS companies means that of course retention matters more than new customers. And yet … there’s no point in doing customer retention if you don’t have enough customers. ??.

Retention 318

Retention Scaling Churn Engineering 318

SaaStr

JANUARY 11, 2024

But with everyone discussing PLG, there just isn’t enough discussion in B2B of Product-Led Retention. and so deeply embedded in the fabric of our customers’ businesses that they’d never churn. But our B2C friends obsess about Product-Led Retention. Well, we do all track NRR, churn and hopefully GRR too.

Retention 322

Retention B2C B2B Churn 322

SaaStr

APRIL 1, 2020

Downgrades are not churn. It may be time to segment your “churn” into lost customers vs. downgrades. In a recurring revenue model, a customer that churns is a customer you never really had at all. Focus more on logo retention, and logo happiness today, than raw ARR growth. And A Downgrade is Not Churn.

Churn 332

Churn Pricing Retention Branding 332

SaaStr

JANUARY 16, 2025

What Most SaaS Companies Get Wrong The standard playbook is: Hire sales Hit growth targets Eventually add CS when churn becomes painful But that’s backward. Don’t wait until you’re forced to fix churn. The best customers are ones your CS team fights to work with. Way earlier. Build it into your DNA from the start.

Sales Hiring 246

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Churn 246

Intercom, Inc.

FEBRUARY 11, 2020

A retention campaign that paints a commercial relationship as a personal one will always be awkward at best and at worst will create ill will. Here’s three better ways to create retention campaigns that feel genuine and actually work: Focus on how your product helps. Identify and solve the problems that caused churn.

Retention 282

Retention Sales Hiring Churn Onboarding 282

SaaStr

AUGUST 16, 2021

We put out a call on Twitter the other day for folks’ best tips on what has really lowered churn for them this year. “1/ Divide your churn into manageable and unmanageable areas 2/ Strip out definable areas of churn reason (e.g. Are you segmenting churn? When you do, magic happens in retention.

Churn 329

Churn Sales Hiring Headcount Technical Review 329

Stax

MARCH 16, 2025

The average churn rate for the software industry as a whole is 14%. Thats actually one of the lowest churn rates across all industries. That said, industry experts agree that your SaaS companys goal churn should be below 2%. TL;DR The average software industry churn rate is 14%, but SaaS companies should aim for under 2%.

Payment Solutions 88

Payment Solutions Software Review Churn SaaS Payments 88

SaaStr

JANUARY 14, 2021

Reducing churn in SaaS, along with increasing new ARR is the backbone to growing your business. In this guide, Andrea Webb, the SVP of Customer Success & Retention at Solarwinds , and Tim Willey, the SVP of Commercial Strategy & Operations at ForgeRock , share their tips for understanding and combating churn. .

Churn 260

Churn Customer Success Payment Features Subscription 260

Clouded Judgement

NOVEMBER 18, 2024

ServiceTitan discloses that their net retention is “>110%” Gross Margin Adjusted CAC Payback (Previous Q S&M) / (Net New ARR x Gross Margin) x 12.

Benchmarks 299

Benchmarks Payments Payment Services SaaS Payments 299

SaaStr

APRIL 30, 2025

Churn and Expansion : For existing customers, analyze churn rates, upsell/cross-sell performance, and NRR (Net Revenue Retention). AI can help predict churn and identify expansion opportunities. If so, why? Metrics like time spent in each stage and reasons for lost deals can provide clarity.

Technical Review 184

Technical Review Sales Forecasting AI 184

SaaStr

MARCH 23, 2025

For a VP of Customer Success (VPCS), their “quota” or ownership should revolve around two key metrics: Net Revenue Retention (NRR) and Gross Retention Rate (GRR). A strong GRR (80-90%) ensures your base is solid, and youre not just masking churn with upsells.

VPCs (Virtual Private Cloud) 159

VPCs (Virtual Private Cloud) Customer Success Churn Retention 159

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 7, 2025

Here’s how Notion crushed it: The Hard Metrics: 49-51% open rates (2x industry average) 1-1.5%

Scale 277

Scale SaaS B2B Scaling 277

SaaStr

OCTOBER 28, 2021

At Evernote, they conflated bounce with churn — and Phil challenges us not to. They aren’t both retention per se. Retention is 3 things mashed together, “bounce, low-value churn, and high-value churn”, and you have to measure them separately. We have all seen this :). A lot of us see this.

Churn 262

Churn Retention Acquisition Startup 262

Intercom, Inc.

AUGUST 23, 2022

Customer retention has never been more critical to business success than it is today. Shifting focus to customer retention can actually be twice as powerful as customer acquisition. While a 1% increase in acquisition might boost your bottom line by about 3% , a 1% decrease in churn can boost it by 7% !

Customer Support 211

Customer Support Retention Headcount Customer Lifetime Value 211

SaaStr

MAY 24, 2025

If youre selling to SMBs, churn can be a killerfix it now. At 35% growth, youre not on the IPO trajectory, but you can still build a profitable, sustainable business if you focus on efficiency and customer retention. Operational Focus At 35% growth, you need to optimize every dollar spent.

Sales Hiring 192

Sales Hiring B2B Churn Retention 192

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 17, 2023

While the allure of customer acquisition can pull a founder’s attention, it’s equally important to dedicate resources to fighting churn and expanding revenue from existing customers. They discuss how Fox helped build a churn-fighting, upselling, and cross-selling machine that continues to generate revenue.

Retention 246

Retention Startup Revenue Sales Hiring 246

SaaStr

MAY 27, 2025

I f onboarding is broken, it creates a ripple effectcustomers dont adopt the product fully, they dont see value quickly, and theyre far more likely to churn. You cant fix churn or improve NRR if customers never get properly onboarded in the first place. Most Churn Happens Early The first 90 days are where most churn happens.

AI 166

AI Onboarding Customer Success Scale 166

SaaStr

MAY 16, 2025

High CAC Is a Symptom, Not the Root Problem If your CAC is too high, its likely because of one (or more) of these issues: Churn is too high : If customers arent sticking around, your CAC payback period will balloon. Fixing churn is often the fastest way to make CAC more reasonable. Itll just starve your pipeline and make things worse.

Marketing 159

Marketing Scale Churn Content Marketing 159

SaaStr

APRIL 15, 2025

Avoid the Silent Churn Problem : Many SaaS companies are shocked to discover how low their activation rates are when they start tracking them. If customers dont go live, they churn silently, and you lose revenue before it even starts. Increasing customer consumption and retention. The customer churns within the first 6 months.

Scale 148

Scale Compensation Retention Churn 148

SaaStr

MARCH 9, 2025

The 86% loyalty factor : Companies that provide strong onboarding and continuous educational experiences see 86% higher customer loyalty rates – making AI-powered personalization a critical retention tool. Continuous Education is the New Retention Strategy 86% of customers stay loyal to brands offering educational experiences.

AI 200

AI Scale Education User Experience 200

SaaStr

MARCH 24, 2025

Some fun facts: 10+ years of SaaStr conference attendance Partner at Point Nine Capital, a leading early-stage VC firm Geographic reach: Actively investing across Europe, US, and Australia Notable portfolio: Zendesk, Algolia, Contentful, Loom (and many more) Known for his “five ways to build a $100M business” framework The 5 Key Things (..)

Data 140

Data Acquisition AI Finance 140

SaaStr

MAY 12, 2023

So SaaS Capital put out its latest report on SaaS retention and NRR after having surveyed over 1,500 SaaS companies and professionals. We tend to intuitively think annual contracts help combat churn, but they really don’t — they just defer it. Median NRR is 102% across all SaaS companies, Media Gross Retention is 91%.

Startup 362

Startup SaaS Retention Churn 362

SaaStr

MAY 30, 2022

Having high net revenue / dollar retention is the magic of SaaS. High NRR can hide logo churn. I also see this, in high NRR environments, there isn’t enough talk about logo churn. Second, measure logo retention as often as your do NRR. Strive for 90% logo retention in general wherever you have 120%+ NRR.

Retention 330

Retention Customer Success Churn Trends 330

SaaStr

APRIL 30, 2025

Net Dollar Retention >110% and GDR of >95%: The Power of Being a True Operating System ServiceTitans NRR consistently exceeds 110%, even with SMB-heavy customers. This breadth of functionality ensures customers are deeply embedded in the platform, making churn almost impossible. 5 Interesting Learnings: 1. Thats rare.

Payments 148

Payments Payment Services SaaS Payments Payment Solutions 148

SaaStr

AUGUST 15, 2020

But the end-user usage just never appeared … In SaaS, it actually takes until Year 3 for your customers to churn out from low engagement / low usage. If not, the customer would churn – but not until month 24. In other words, you just can’t tell unless you look at the engagement numbers, not just the churn numbers.

AWS 336

AWS Churn Enterprise Engagement 336

SaaStr

JUNE 11, 2020

In B2C and high-churn environments, it’s indeed a critical metric. So we used their core metrics like “Churn” and “Lifetime value”. But they need to be repurposed, because our B2C friends assume a lot higher churn and turnover, and much lower revenue per customer, than most B2B applications. net churn of 2%-3% a month.

Metrics 287

Metrics Customer Lifetime Value B2C B2B 287

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 2, 2021

Yes, this customer churned after 11 years. But it was a reluctant churn. In that gap, customers with champion change churn. Go long if you have happy customers and Net Negative Churn — Go Very Long. But if you have happy customers and net negative churn (i.e., Drive churn down every quarter.

Scale 318

Scale Churn Retention Acquisition 318