Why customers leave
You worked hard to close the deal. The customer seemed happy at first. Then usage dropped, support tickets appeared, and one day they cancelled. You're left wondering what went wrong.
Take the assessmentWhat you're seeing
Customers sign up and then slowly disengage. Usage metrics decline. They stop attending check-ins. Eventually they churn — sometimes quietly, sometimes with complaints about features or value. It feels like a product problem or a support problem.
What's actually broken
Most churn doesn't start post-sale. It starts pre-sale. When market clarity is weak, you attract customers who aren't a great fit — they buy but never get full value. When pricing doesn't match value delivery, customers feel they're overpaying for what they get. The root causes are upstream: wrong customers coming in (market clarity) or mismatched expectations (pricing and positioning). Fixing churn means fixing who you sell to and what you promise.
Fix it in this order
- 1.
Interview churned customers
Call 5 recent churned customers within a week of cancellation. Ask: "What would have made you stay?" and "When did you first feel it wasn't working?" The timing reveals the root cause.
- 2.
Compare churned vs. retained profiles
Look at who churns vs. who stays. Do churned customers come from a different industry, company size, or use case? If so, your ICP is too broad — you're selling to people who shouldn't be buying.
- 3.
Audit your pricing-value match
For retained customers, what value are they getting that justifies the price? For churned customers, were they getting the same value? If not, the gap is in onboarding or fit, not pricing.
- 4.
Tighten your qualification
The best fix for churn is selling to the right people. Update your qualification criteria to filter out the profiles that consistently churn. Fewer, better customers beats more, worse ones.
Explore the root causes
Related problems
Frequently asked questions about why customers leave
- Is some churn normal?
- Yes. Annual churn rates in B2B SaaS vary widely — 5% or less is excellent, while many early-stage and SMB-focused companies see 10% or higher. Above 20% signals an urgent fit or value problem. The key is understanding whether churn comes from bad-fit customers (fixable by tightening ICP) or good-fit customers who aren't getting value (fixable by improving the product or onboarding).
- Should I focus on reducing churn or increasing acquisition?
- If annual churn is above 15-20%, fix churn first. Acquiring customers into a leaky bucket wastes money — every dollar you spend on acquisition partially drains out the bottom. Once churn is under control, acquisition spend actually compounds.
- How early can I predict a customer will churn?
- Usually within the first 30-60 days. Low product usage in the first month, missed onboarding milestones, and lack of engagement in check-ins are strong predictors. By the time a customer asks to cancel, they decided weeks ago.
- What if customers say they love the product but still leave?
- They either didn't get enough value to justify the cost (pricing gap), or the problem your product solves wasn't urgent enough to keep paying for (market clarity gap). "Love" without continued payment means the value proposition isn't landing where it counts — the budget.