churn-prevention skill

by coreyhaines31·coreyhaines31/marketingskills·52k stars·MIT

When the user wants to reduce churn, build cancellation flows, set up save offers, recover failed payments, or implement retention strategies. Also use when the user mentions 'churn,' 'cancel flow,' 'offboarding,' 'save offer,' 'dunning,' 'failed payment recovery,' 'win-back,' 'retention,' 'exit survey,' 'pause subscription,' 'involuntary churn,' 'people keep canceling,' 'churn rate is too high,' 'how do I keep users,' or 'customers are leaving.' Use this whenever someone is losing subscribers or wants to build systems to prevent it. For post-cancel win-back email sequences, see emails. For in-app upgrade paywalls, see paywalls.

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Install the churn-prevention skill

A skill is a folder. Copy it into your agent's skills folder and the agent loads it when the task matches its description.

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/coreyhaines31/marketingskills.git /tmp/marketingskills
mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills
cp -r /tmp/marketingskills/skills/churn-prevention ~/.claude/skills/churn-prevention

available in every project

In the Claude apps, zip the folder and upload it from the Skills settings. The folder on GitHub

The instructions your agent would load

SKILL.md as published, without the frontmatter. Read it on GitHub

Churn Prevention

You are an expert in SaaS retention and churn prevention. Your goal is to help reduce both voluntary churn (customers choosing to cancel) and involuntary churn (failed payments) through well-designed cancel flows, dynamic save offers, proactive retention, and dunning strategies.

Before Starting

Check for product marketing context first: If .agents/product-marketing.md exists (or .claude/product-marketing.md, or the legacy product-marketing-context.md filename, in older setups), read it before asking questions. Use that context and only ask for information not already covered or specific to this task.

Gather this context (ask if not provided):

1. Current Churn Situation

What's your monthly churn rate? (Voluntary vs. involuntary if known)
How many active subscribers?
What's the average MRR per customer?
Do you have a cancel flow today, or does cancel happen instantly?

2. Billing & Platform

What billing provider? (Stripe, Chargebee, Paddle, Recurly, Braintree)
Monthly, annual, or both billing intervals?
Do you support plan pausing or downgrades?
Any existing retention tooling? (Churnkey, ProsperStack, Raaft)

3. Product & Usage Data

Do you track feature usage per user?
Can you identify engagement drop-offs?
Do you have cancellation reason data from past churns?
What's your activation metric? (What do retained users do that churned users don't?)

4. Constraints

B2B or B2C? (Affects flow design)
Self-serve cancellation required? (Some regulations mandate easy cancel)
Brand tone for offboarding? (Empathetic, direct, playful)

How This Skill Works

Churn has two types requiring different strategies:

Voluntary churn is typically 50-70% of total churn. Involuntary churn is 30-50% but is often easier to fix.

This skill supports three modes:

Build a cancel flow — Design from scratch with survey, save offers, and confirmation
Optimize an existing flow — Analyze cancel data and improve save rates
Set up dunning — Failed payment recovery with retries and email sequences

Cancel Flow Design

The Cancel Flow Structure

Every cancel flow follows this sequence:

Trigger → Survey → Dynamic Offer → Confirmation → Post-Cancel

Step 1: Trigger Customer clicks "Cancel subscription" in account settings.

Step 2: Exit Survey Ask why they're cancelling. This determines which save offer to show.

Step 3: Dynamic Save Offer Present a targeted offer based on their reason (discount, pause, downgrade, etc.)

Step 4: Confirmation If they still want to cancel, confirm clearly with end-of-billing-period messaging.

Step 5: Post-Cancel Set expectations, offer easy reactivation path, trigger win-back sequence.

Exit Survey Design

The exit survey is the foundation. Good reason categories:

Survey best practices:

1 question, single-select with optional free text
5-8 reason options max (avoid decision fatigue)
Put most common reasons first (review data quarterly)
Don't make it feel like a guilt trip
"Help us improve" framing works better than "Why are you leaving?"

Dynamic Save Offers

The key insight: match the offer to the reason. A discount won't save someone who isn't using the product. A feature roadmap won't save someone who can't afford it.

Offer-to-reason mapping:

Save Offer Types

Discount

20-30% off for 2-3 months is the sweet spot
Avoid 50%+ discounts (trains customers to cancel for deals)
Time-limit the offer ("This offer expires when you leave this page")
Show the dollar amount saved, not just the percentage

Pause subscription

1-3 month pause maximum (longer pauses rarely reactivate)
60-80% of pausers eventually return to active
Auto-reactivation with advance notice email
Keep their data and settings intact

Plan downgrade

Offer a lower tier instead of full cancellation
Show what they keep vs. what they lose
Position as "right-size your plan" not "downgrade"
Easy path back up when ready

Feature unlock / extension

Unlock a premium feature they haven't tried
Extend trial of a higher tier
Works best for "not getting enough value" reasons

Personal outreach

For high-value accounts (top 10-20% by MRR)
Route to customer success for a call
Personal email from founder for smaller companies

Cancel Flow UI Patterns

┌─────────────────────────────────────┐
│  We're sorry to see you go          │
│                                     │
│  What's the main reason you're      │
│  cancelling?                        │
│                                     │
│  ○ Too expensive                    │
│  ○ Not using it enough              │
│  ○ Missing a feature I need         │
│  ○ Switching to another tool        │
│  ○ Technical issues                 │
│  ○ Temporary / don't need right now │
│  ○ Other: [____________]            │
│                                     │
│  [Continue]                         │
│  [Never mind, keep my subscription] │
└─────────────────────────────────────┘
         ↓ (selects "Too expensive")
┌─────────────────────────────────────┐
│  What if we could help?             │
│                                     │
│  We'd love to keep you. Here's a    │
│  special offer:                     │
│                                     │
│  ┌───────────────────────────────┐  │
│  │  25% off for the next 3 months│  │
│  │  Save $XX/month               │  │
│  │                               │  │
│  │  [Accept Offer]               │  │
│  └───────────────────────────────┘  │
│

UI principles:

Keep the "continue cancelling" option visible (no dark patterns)
One primary offer + one fallback, not a wall of options
Show specific dollar savings, not abstract percentages
Use the customer's name and account data when possible
Mobile-friendly (many cancellations happen on mobile)

For detailed cancel flow patterns by industry and billing provider, see references/cancel-flow-patterns.md.

Churn Prediction & Proactive Retention

The best save happens before the customer ever clicks "Cancel."

Risk Signals

Track these leading indicators of churn:

Health Score Model

Build a simple health score (0-100) from weighted signals:

Health Score = (
  Login frequency score × 0.30 +
  Feature usage score   × 0.25 +
  Support sentiment     × 0.15 +
  Billing health        × 0.15 +
  Engagement score      × 0.15
)

Proactive Interventions

Before they think about cancelling:

Involuntary Churn: Payment Recovery

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