Finally, the Data to Back What You Already Know: Churn Is Not a Customer Success Problem
This week’s guest blog by Alex Atkins discusses a study that we found really interesting. Enjoy!
Causes of Churn from 31 Million Customer Conversations.
By Alex Atkins
For years, you've been shouting from the rooftops: Customer Success can't solve churn alone. You've witnessed firsthand how sales' overpromises, product gaps, and organizational silos undermine even the most dedicated CS efforts. And now, we have the data to prove it.
We moved beyond anecdotal evidence and subjective surveys, leveraging robust data science to analyze a massive corpus of 3.2 billion words extracted from 31 million real-world customer interactions. We augmented this dataset with telemetry data pulled directly from system-of-record APIs. From this multi-faceted analysis, the hard data reinforces what you already know: Churn is not a Customer Success Problem.
The Data Reveals:
Churn Attributable to Systemic Issues: Our analysis reveals that departments outside of Customer Success (Sales, Product, Marketing, and Finance) are responsible for a statistically significant portion of customer churn.
Product-Driven Churn: Quantified through the analysis of support tickets, chats, emails, call transcripts, and feature request forums, "Product Gap" scores now rival CS-attributable factors at 27% as a direct driver of churn.
Marketing and Sales Misalignment: Our "Broken Promises" index, derived from cross-referencing sales collateral with actual product performance, reveals that 24% of churn can be traced to misaligned expectations set during the sales cycle.
Breakdown of unstructured and structured data sources analyzed by Sturdy.ai.
This report provides Customer Success teams with:
Data-Driven Advocacy Tools: Concrete, statistically validated evidence to support requests for cross-functional collaboration and resource allocation. You can move beyond feelings and demonstrate real impact on churn.
Framework for Collaborative Change: A pragmatic guide to realigning teams and implementing shared accountability for customer retention metrics, backed by quantifiable success metrics.
Guide to Champion Customer-Centricity: Lead the charge in creating a culture of customer ownership across the business, backed by data and actionable strategies.
Download the full report now and unlock the secrets to sustainable, cross-functional retention.
Alex Atkins - Raised in Boston and now living in Austin, Alex helps GTM teams succeed in SaaS, driven by a passion for data analysis. Alex develops data-driven programs, strategies, and operations to empower growth professionals to achieve exceptional results.