alexe-ev Analyze Churn & Retention
Purpose
Help teams analyze churn patterns, surface root causes, and design targeted retention interventions.
Skill type
Conceptual skill with analytical components
Use this skill when
- Churn is elevated or increasing and the team doesn't know why
- A retention problem has been identified and needs diagnosis
- Churn root causes need to be separated (product, onboarding, support, competitive)
- A retention intervention strategy needs to be designed
Do not use this skill when
- The goal is general retention cohort analysis (use analyze-funnel-retention-cohorts)
- Churn data isn't available (collect data first)
Required inputs
- Churn rate or trend data
- Product type and customer segment
Optional inputs
- Exit survey data or churn reasons
- Cohort churn analysis
- Customer success escalation logs
- Competitive context
Upstream context
Works best when:
- Customer segment is defined
- Retention metrics are tracked
Downstream handoff
Output can feed:
- monitor-adoption-health
- formulate-experiment-hypothesis (churn hypothesis → experiment)
- identify-problem-opportunity
Instructions
- Establish churn baseline and trend (improving, stable, worsening).
- Segment churn by key dimensions (cohort, segment, product area, tenure).
- Identify the primary churn reasons from available data.
- Categorize root causes: product gaps, onboarding failures, competitive loss, support issues.
- Design targeted interventions per root cause.
- Define success metrics for retention interventions.
Output
Provide:
- Churn baseline and trend
- Churn segmentation analysis
- Primary churn reasons with evidence
- Root cause categorization
- Targeted intervention recommendations per root cause
- Success metrics for interventions
- Data gaps and recommended research
Risks / caveats
- Exit surveys are self-reported and often incomplete — triangulate with behavioral data
- Not all churn is recoverable — identify which segments are worth intervening on
- Addressing churn symptoms without root causes provides only temporary relief