Measuring customer retention or you get what you measure

Most companies measure the number of customers who leave them in some form or fashion.  Most call it churn.  This is not a bad thing, not as such.  But think of it like this, if you get what you measure, why do you want to measure the number of customers leaving?  Wouldn’t you prefer a measure that tells you about the number of customers you’re keeping?  Can you see how the focus shifts?  How the goals are different?  I like keeping the attention on how to keep your customers.  I like seeing how well we do at that and studying and listening about how to do it even better. 

Measuring retention instead of churn shouldn’t be anymore difficult, as metrics go.  It should be designed to fit how you sell in your marketplace and around customer behavior.  I like how retention metrics focus on the positive and language turns into more customer focused intentions rather than preventative measures.  I like how retention can be proactive (“What can we do to be even better? How would you like to see us improve?”) and gets you out of being strictly reactive (“Oh, you want to leave?  Can we do something to keep you now?”)  Being focused on keeping the customer once they have decided to leave feels like “too little, too late”.  At that point, I am often more insulted than interested in taking any offer to stay.  Why wasn’t I valuable enough to you for this discounted offer before I decided to leave you?

So I vote that it’s time to leave behind the churn metrics and move forward into retention metrics.  Let’s show our customers we care about them now, while they are still with us on that customer experience ride.  What do you say?