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Crawl 2–4 weeks
Establish a Retention Baseline
Create a single, trusted retention number your team can rally around and improve.
Why This Matters
Without a baseline, you can't tell if CS is working. Most crawl-stage teams don't know their real churn rate — they track logos lost but miss contraction, downgrades, and late renewals. A clear baseline turns 'we think we're doing okay' into 'we know where we stand.'
Action Plan
- 01 Audit your billing or subscription data for the last 12 months — identify every churned, downgraded, and expanded account
- 02 Calculate Gross Revenue Retention (GRR) and Logo Retention for the trailing 12 months
- 03 Segment the results by cohort (signup quarter) and customer size if possible
- 04 Identify the top 3 churn reasons by reviewing cancellation notes, support tickets, and CSM feedback
- 05 Set a GRR target for the next quarter based on your current number (aim for 2–5% improvement)
- 06 Create a simple monthly dashboard (spreadsheet is fine) that tracks GRR, logo retention, and churned ARR
- 07 Share the baseline and target with your leadership team to create accountability
Metrics to Watch
Common Pitfalls
- Using logo count instead of revenue-weighted retention — a churned enterprise account matters more than 10 lost SMB accounts
- Excluding downgrades from churn calculations, which inflates your retention number
- Setting an unrealistic target (e.g., jumping from 80% to 95% GRR in one quarter)