“Is it a good idea to switch the monthly plans with quarterly to reduce the churn rate in an SaaS business?” Answer by @NikkiElizDemere

Churn isn’t caused by sending the bill, or having a quarterly or monthly plan. You could ask subscribers “Are you still in? Want out? You sure?” every single day and if they are making real, tangible progress towards achieving their desired outcomes with your product, they’ll say “Dude, don’t be so insecure. I freakin’ love you.”

Or something to that effect.

Thing is, they’ll stay with you for one reason, and one reason only: If your product is helping them achieve their goals (and doing it better/faster than your competitors).

Now, it would be lovely if churn was as simple as that. It almost is, but there’s another component to the issue.

Do the customers who are churning have the potential to succeed in the first place?

Think of churn as a symptom, not the disease, and it’s usually caused by customers who either don’t have Success Potential or aren’t reaching their Desired Outcomes. So instead of A/B testing your plan cycle, focus on checking whether customers who are churning have success potential in the first place (Lincoln Murphy has a very handy checklist in the second article), and if they don’t, it means your marketing may be attracting the wrong people and/or your sales team may be selling to the wrong people.

If the churning customers do seem to have success potential, then you’re going to have to dig deep (ie. voice of customer data, surveys, interviews) to find out what these “ideal” customers aren’t getting from you that they need.

I originally answered this question on Quora.

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