{"id":268534,"date":"2025-04-25T06:54:41","date_gmt":"2025-04-25T06:54:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/userpilot.com\/blog\/?post_type=pitt&p=268534"},"modified":"2026-02-17T19:04:06","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T19:04:06","slug":"how-to-conduct-retention-research-nikki-anderson","status":"publish","type":"pitt","link":"https:\/\/userpilot.com\/blog\/pitt\/how-to-conduct-retention-research-nikki-anderson\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Conduct Retention Research"},"content":{"rendered":"

Have you ever received this question from stakeholders: \u201cWhy are people <\/span>churning<\/span><\/a>?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The first time I heard this question, I was immediately invested. I wanted to find out all the reasons people had left our app. I wanted to unlock this magical realm of information for our teams that I thought would solve our churn problems.<\/span><\/p>\n

And then, I tried to recruit churned users. I tried to recruit people who were annoyed with us, didn\u2019t want to hear from us, were pissed about something we did, removed themselves from our product universe, and, quite frankly, disliked us.<\/span><\/p>\n

Spoiler: It didn\u2019t work well.<\/span><\/p>\n

I spent months trying to find people to talk to. Most of my recruitment efforts were rebuffed. No one wanted to talk to me about why they left. No one wanted to take my <\/span>churn survey<\/span><\/a>, even for a pretty solid incentive.<\/span><\/p>\n

I repeated this process a few times with little success, and when I was finally accepting defeat, I decided to go about it in a slightly different way.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What if we focused on retention instead of churn?<\/span><\/p>\n

What\u2019s retention?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Retention is all about keeping your customer base. It\u2019s great to acquire new customers, but it is often (for most companies) really expensive. And, if you are acquiring new customers, but they are leaving, then you are burning through quite a lot of money.<\/span><\/p>\n

Retaining customers<\/span><\/a> not only ensures a stable revenue stream but can also lead to brand advocacy and long-term growth. You can measure retention using metrics like:<\/span><\/p>\n