How to keep more of your customers
February 16, 2026
Hi Everyone,
We live in a non-linear world where a minority of factors often drive the majority of outcomes.
And this is certainly the case for problems and issues as well, such as customer churn.
For example, 20% of the issues (e.g., price, timing, fit) that lead to a customer not renewing account for 80% of the non-renewals.
That pattern holds across industries and company sizes.
But it only takes 10 calls with former customers to figure out what the 20% is, so you and your team can start devising solutions.
Today, we're covering how to run those calls and what to do with what you hear - because as the saying goes, "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush".
Finding your 20%
1. Choose who to call
Pull your last 30-60 churned customers.
Filter out the ones you couldn't help anyway (company shut down, acquired, regulatory change).
From what's left, choose a mix: some recent, some from a few months back; some high-value, some typical.
2. Use this question
Start with "What made you cancel?"
Not "why did you cancel?" – that phrasing asks people to justify themselves.
"What made you" implies a cause, and it gets more honest answers.
Groove, a customer support software company, tested both versions and saw response rates nearly double with the second phrasing.
Then ask them to walk you through the events that led to their decision, like when they first started considering leaving.
You'll often find the real problem happened months before the cancellation.
3. Listen for what they mean, not what they say
Churned customers give polite, surface-level reasons.
Your job is to translate polite explanations into root causes.
When someone says "too expensive," they often mean they didn't see the ROI to justify the renewal.
When they say "we weren't using it enough," they often mean it was too complicated to adopt, or their internal champion left.
When they say "budget constraints," they often mean they couldn't make the business case to keep you.
4. Cluster what you hear
After 10 calls, group the reasons. You'll probably have 6-10 items on your list.
Now score them. For each reason, estimate:
- How often does this come up (frequency)
- How much revenue did we lose to it (value)
- How feasible is it to fix (addressability)
Multiply those together, and you get a rough priority order. The reasons that are frequent, costly, and fixable go to the top. Drop anything that came up fewer than twice. If only one person mentioned it, it's noise.
5. Assign the fixes
Each problem on your short list needs an owner.
- Product owns usability issues and feature gaps.
- Customer Success owns onboarding friction and early-stage churn.
- Marketing owns messaging confusion (when customers say "this wasn't what I expected").
- Sales owns qualification failures (when you sold to someone who was never going to succeed).
If you can't assign an owner, the fix won't happen. Name the person, set a timeline, and add it to your operating review.
Go deeper
👉 Groove: How We Grew Our Customer Exit Survey Responses by 785%
👉 Paddle: How to Build Cancellation & Exit Surveys That Reduce Churn
👉 ChurnZero: Q&A with Anita Toth on Customer Exit Interviews
👉 Lean B2B: How to Run a Customer Exit Survey to Improve Retention
Coming up tomorrow
Tomorrow we'll look at the cognitive biases that trip up CEOs and senior leaders, and two zero-cost practices that fix them.
Have a great week!
P.S. If you've done churn calls before, what's the most surprising thing a customer told you? We're curious what patterns others are seeing – let us know