Most product teams approach churn as something negative, trying to avoid customer [[Churn Rate]] in every imaginable and unimaginable way. This leads to various [[User Retention]] offers, trial subscription, and more. But the attitude towards churn itself is wrong and traps a lot of teams. **3 Churn Rate Myths:** 1. Churn is viewed as something bad to be avoided. 2. Teams blindly focus on [[User Reactivation]]. 3. Churn is seen as the end of the [[customer journey map]]. ## Churn is seen as something bad to be avoided To understand if it is good or bad, one needs to understand the details, namely to: - identify who are your loyal customers and how they behave; - identify who are those leaving and how they behave. The characteristics of both segments will vary from product to product, so they need to be researched. It is very important to define the [[Product Target Audience]] , its characteristics and to tailor the product for it. Without this, you will lose focus and will be trying to solve everyone's problems and... nobody's. OK, we understood the behavior of both segments and it seems like we can survey those who have left the churn and extract their [[Customer Pain Points]] , solve them and... NO, DONT DO THAT. NO, because: > [!NOTE] > within the segment of those who have left there are different use cases with different contexts, and by lumping them all together, we will just blur our conclusions. You will have non-target customers who WOULD NOT be able to solve their problems with your product and that's normal, but there will also be those who potentially could. Let's dig deeper. Unsheath the characteristics of your core audience and look for it inside the churn. Work focused on it: find out the reasons, think of solutions. > [!NOTE] > Ignore the non-target type of customers in the churn, saving resources. By asking the audience who churned about the reasons for their departure, you will only find the starting points but not understand the context of the scenario. Here comes to the rescue the research of those who are satisfied with the product and use it constantly. We look at their scenarios, and behavior and compare it all with the pain points of those who left. At the intersection, we get insights and solutions. ## Teams blindly focus on reactivating customers The logic is: let's revive as many departed customers as possible, the base will grow again and [[product monetization]] with it, right? WRONG. > [!NOTE] > The catch is that we can't reactivate those for whom the product was not originally intended. As with the previous myth, it is important for us to understand who our current audience is. You can't make a product for everyone, it doesn't work. So churn turns into work with [[Customer Retention]]. We think about how to keep our [[Active users]], how to solve their tasks, and how to make them happier. In most markets, working with preventive [[user retention]] of customers is cheaper than working with churn. ## Churn is perceived as the end of the [[customer journey map]] Many think of churn as a binary function: the customer left/did not leave, forgetting that there may be intermediate states. Hence, solutions are created based on the "last chance to retain the customer" principle. Instead, it is better to focus on the last interactions with the product and work with [[Customer Value]]. There are also situations when churn is not churn at all.