The contract was signed in March. The renewal was decided in April.

Churn gets dated to the month a customer leaves. The decision usually belongs to a much earlier period, when everything still looked fine.

By Steve 5 min read
Abstract bridge artwork for The contract was signed in March. The renewal was decided in April.

When an account is lost, the post-mortem almost always starts at the end. What changed in the last quarter, who stopped replying, which competitor got in. The record of the relationship is read backwards from the cancellation, and the cause is looked for near the exit. The evidence more often points somewhere else. In subscription and retainer businesses, cancellations cluster by tenure, not by calendar date, and a large share of them trace back to the first few weeks after purchase, when the customer was forming a view about whether…

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