Churn

Churn is the rate at which you lose customers or recurring revenue over a period. It's the counterweight to new sales: a business can add MRR every month and still shrink if churn is higher.

Two ways to measure churn

• Customer (logo) churn — the share of customers who cancel in a period. churned customers ÷ customers at the start.
• Revenue churn — the share of MRR lost. This can be gross (cancellations and downgrades only) or net (offset by expansion from remaining customers).

A business with high logo churn but low revenue churn is losing small accounts while keeping big ones — a very different story than the reverse.

Voluntary vs involuntary churn

Not all churn is a choice. Involuntary churn happens when a payment fails and is never recovered — a failed card, not an unhappy customer. It's often the largest and most recoverable slice, which is why dunning and failed-payment alerts matter.

Reducing churn

• Catch failed payments early so cards can be updated before the subscription lapses.
• Watch cancellations as they happen so you can follow up while the reason is fresh.
• Track net revenue retention to see whether expansion is outrunning churn.

ChargeBell posts every cancellation and failed payment to Slack in real time, so churn is something your team sees and reacts to, not something you discover at month-end.