Diagnoses SaaS churn root causes through cohort analysis and a seven-category taxonomy, then builds segmented intervention playbooks ranked by frequency, revenue at stake, and addressability - including save-offer economics. Use when someone asks "why is our churn so high", "build a churn reduction plan", "should we offer discounts to cancelling customers", or when NRR/GRR is slipping and the team needs a diagnosis before prescriptions. Do NOT use for gym or fitness-studio member retention - use retention-and-churn-killer instead. Do NOT use for re-acquiring customers who already left - use win-back-campaign instead. Do NOT use for growing existing accounts - use expansion-revenue instead.
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name: Churn Reduction
description: Diagnoses SaaS churn root causes through cohort analysis and a seven-category taxonomy, then builds segmented intervention playbooks ranked by frequency, revenue at stake, and addressability - including save-offer economics. Use when someone asks "why is our churn so high", "build a churn reduction plan", "should we offer discounts to cancelling customers", or when NRR/GRR is slipping and the team needs a diagnosis before prescriptions. Do NOT use for gym or fitness-studio member retention - use retention-and-churn-killer instead. Do NOT use for re-acquiring customers who already left - use win-back-campaign instead. Do NOT use for growing existing accounts - use expansion-revenue instead.
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# Churn Reduction
Churn is the silent killer of SaaS - 5% monthly churn caps the business no matter how fast acquisition runs, because it compounds into LTV, NRR, and valuation. The costly mistake this skill prevents is prescribing before diagnosing: launching a save-offer program or a CS hiring spree against a blended churn number, when the real leak is bad-fit acquisition or failed onboarding that no discount can fix.
## Operating procedure
Diagnosis strictly precedes intervention. Steps 1-3 establish what is actually leaking; only then do playbooks get built.
### Step 1: Gather inputs
1. Monthly logo churn and revenue churn for the trailing 12 months. Track both - a small customer leaving and a whale leaving are different problems.
2. GRR and NRR. Gross revenue retention (churn + contraction only) isolates the leak; net revenue retention (includes expansion) can hide it. An NRR of 105% with GRR of 82% is a leaky bucket propped up by a few expanding whales.
3. Customer list with segment, plan, signup month, acquisition channel, ACV.
4. Cancellation reasons, exit interviews, and support history where they exist. Default: sparse - plan interviews in Step 3.
5. Payment-failure data (involuntary churn is often invisible in "reasons").
Label any estimated figure as an estimate.
### Step 2: Cohort before concluding
… install to load the full skill