Retention Is Won in the Ordinary Months

Customer churn rarely happens suddenly. There's always a period — weeks or months — where engagement declines, issues go unaddressed, and the customer gradually disengages. The retention playbook's job is to catch and intervene during that window.

The Retention Intelligence System

Step 1: Health Score & Early Warning

Design a customer health scoring model:

AVAILABLE SIGNALS:
- Product usage metrics: [list what you track]
- Support interactions: [ticket volume, severity, satisfaction]
- Relationship signals: [meeting attendance, email responsiveness, contact depth]
- Commercial signals: [payment patterns, contract terms, renewal timeline]
- Engagement signals: [event attendance, content consumption, community participation]

Create a health score model:

1. USAGE HEALTH (weight: ___%)
   - Metric 1: [what to measure] → Scoring: [healthy/warning/critical thresholds]
   - Metric 2: [what to measure] → Scoring: [thresholds]