7 Strategies to Improve Your Customer Retention Rate

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What is the Customer Retention Rate?

Why is Customer Retention Important for B2B SaaS Businesses?

7 Strategies You Should Try to Improve Customer Retention Rate

FAQ

Ready to Improve Your Customer Retention Strategy?

In B2B SaaS, winning new customers grabs headlines, but keeping them drives real growth. 

Every cancellation chips away at your predictable recurring revenue and forces you to spend more on acquisition. 

By focusing on retention, you can stabilise your bottom line and unlock upsell opportunities to turn customers into advocates. 

In this article, we’ll dive into proven strategies to help you improve your customer retention rate. From stellar onboarding to proactive support and product upgrades, these will help you hold onto customers and improve your customer retention rate. Let’s get started!

What is the Customer Retention Rate?

Customer Retention Rate (CRR) is the percentage of customers a business keeps over a given period. It shows how good you are at keeping your existing customers subscribed and satisfied over time.

Here’s the formula for customer retention rate:

CRR = ((E - N) / S) × 100

Where:

• E = Number of customers at the end of the period
• N = Number of new customers acquired during the period
• S = Number of customers at the start of the period

Let’s say you started the quarter with 100 customers, gained 20 new ones, and ended with 110.

Your CRR = ((110 - 20) / 100) × 100 = 90%

Also Read:

• Churn Analysis: Definition, Ways to Do it, & How to Monitor it
• How to Improve Subscription Renewal Rates

Why is Customer Retention Important for B2B SaaS Businesses?

Customer retention is extremely important for B2B SaaS businesses as they rely on recurring revenue from repeat customers. Chasing new customers constantly is costly and unsustainable. That’s why you should try to improve your customer retention rate.

Actively tracking and trying to improve your customer retention rate can help you:

• Spot issues early by watching for rising cancellations.
• Protect your recurring revenue by measuring lost customers.
• Compare acquisition versus retention costs to optimise your budget.
• Guide product improvements with real churn feedback.
• Forecast growth accurately using your churn rate.
• Take proactive measures to re-engage at-risk customers.

Also Read:

• Reducing Churn: AI Customer Success Meets Subscription Billing
• What is a Good Churn Rate for SaaS Companies? Benchmarks

7 Strategies You Should Try to Improve Customer Retention Rate

Want to improve your customer retention rate but not sure where to start? Implement the following strategies and see what works for you.

1. Track and Manage Your Customer Data

Without knowing who your customers are and their activities, purchases, and habits, how can you best serve them? Using a customer relationship management (CRM) solution is a good place to start, but it’s not enough to improve your customer retention rate.

Your customers should be segmented as much as possible. Identify your VIP customers (those who spend the most, have the biggest contracts, or the best networks that can benefit you). If they are important for the success of your business, you should be devoting time to them.

Identify your "needy" customers. Which ones need more hands-on help to implement new features or understand how your system works? Don't get annoyed or frustrated by these customers, be as helpful as possible, and they will be more likely to share their good experience with others.

But you should also track key metrics that signal that customers are on the verge of cancellation. Are there repeated invoicing issues? Are there customer service tickets that go unanswered? Are they spending less and less time on your platform? 

These are all opportunities for intervention. Reach out to these customers to identify the issue and how you can solve it. Perhaps they aren't understanding the SaaS billing terms, or they don't know how to maximise the use of your software. It is possible to avoid losing these customers and improve your customer retention rate, just by tracking more individualised information about them.

Use a subscription management and recurring billing software solution like Younium to get in-depth analytics and insights into your customer behaviour. It tracks all important metrics related to accounts, bookings, revenue, and customers to help you make informed decisions to improve your customer retention rate.

Image via Younium

2. Identify and Prevent Potential Churn

Think about the factors that contribute to customer churn: perhaps your customer has an issue that is unresolved, they don't feel they are getting a good value for their money, or they don't feel that you care enough about them.

If you practice a high-touch sales process, you may likely set expectations of your customers for a high level of continued support. Try to put yourself in your customer's shoes. What is most important to them, and what would really impress them in terms of customer support?

Here are some common causes of customer churn in B2B SaaS businesses for your quick reference.

Conduct a thorough churn analysis to find the reasons why customers leave and take measures to prevent them from leaving to improve your customer retention rate.

Approach your customers with enough support in place. Check in with your accounts periodically to show that customer satisfaction is important to you.

Perhaps your organisation doesn't yet have the ability to designate account managers to each of your customers. That doesn't mean you don't have the ability to still help them. 

Consider how you can create content that will address and answer common questions. Create guides for step-by-step methods for getting the most out of your products. Or, create an online community where your customers can gather, ask questions of each other, or generally feel a sense of belonging.

These tactics will help you improve your customer retention rate by enhancing the customer experience.

3. Offer Incentives and Rewards

Loyalty programs and referral incentives are actually an incredibly effective method for remarketing and sales. Again, the sense of belonging that your customers may feel when they are a part of a loyalty program can greatly improve the likelihood that they will stay your customer.

For B2B companies, loyalty programs may seem like something that doesn't apply, but that's not true. As with tracking your customer data, find when your customers are up for subscription renewals. Perhaps you can give them a discount, or a reward for renewing, or at least show some form of appreciation when they do. While happy customers don't always need incentives to stay with a product or company that they love, it can still go a long way in continuing to develop their positive impression of you.

If you are prioritising existing customers throughout your entire organisation, rather than spending all of your focus on acquiring new customers, your retention rates will improve. In fact, you can spend far less time and money when you focus on customer retention than on customer acquisition, because you have a captive audience. 

By utilising your customer information and data, putting your existing customers first, and considering how to boost customer loyalty, you can improve your customer retention rate.

Also Read:

• What is SaaS Analytics and Which Metrics Should You Track?
• The All-Inclusive Guide to B2B SaaS Subscription Metrics

4. Provide a Great Onboarding Experience

A structured, engaging onboarding sets the tone for long-term customer success and helps you improve your customer retention rate. Treat it as a guided journey that helps users reach their first “aha” moment, then reinforce that value. 

Here’s how you can organise each step to improve your customer retention rate.

• Map a Clear, Time-Bound Journey: Break onboarding into a limited set of high-impact tasks with deadlines so users never feel lost. Design a “Day 1–7” roadmap and list 5–7 key actions, display progress bars, and send gentle reminders.
•  Use Interactive, Contextual Product Tours: Guide users through features exactly when they need them. Implement tooltips triggered the first time a user uses a new feature.
• Assign a Dedicated Onboarding Specialist: A personal touch builds trust and ensures customers align your tool with their business goals from Day 1.
• Provide Self-Service Resources: Let users find answers without leaving your product dashboard, so they stay in flow and solve problems instantly. Integrate a help widget or chatbot within your UI and tag articles by feature. You can also create a knowledge base or resource library on your website.

Younium, for example, has an extensive resource hub where customers can find useful guides on using its different features. 

Image via Younium

5. Keep Improving and Upgrading Your Product

Regular product updates and upgrades show customers that you care about improving customer experience and building a best-in-class product. This helps build trust in your business, which helps improve your customer retention rate.

Here are some tips you can follow to improve your customer retention rate by continually updating your product.

• Release Regular, Value-Driven Updates: Push out small, meaningful features at a steady pace instead of waiting for one big annual launch.
• Build Features That Solve Real Pain Points: Don’t chase flashy trends—focus on issues your customers actually face. Use support tickets, NPS comments, and user interviews to identify top challenges and tackle those first.
• Streamline Release Communication: Announce new features with concise in-app banners, short demo videos, or one-page release notes. Show customers exactly how the upgrade benefits their workflow.
• Enable Early Access and Beta Programs: Invite your most engaged customers to test upcoming releases. Their feedback helps you refine features and makes them feel special to get early access.

This can help you encourage customers to remain loyal and improve your customer retention rate.

6. Go Above and Beyond with Customer Support

If you want to improve your customer retention rate and keep customers happy, you need to provide excellent customer service and support. Poor customer service can cause even a loyal customer to switch to competitors. Per a survey, 86% of loyal, satisfied customers leave a brand after two bad experiences.

Here’s what you can do.

• Respond Faster Than Customers Expect: Strive to reply within an hour of receiving a ticket to improve your customer retention rate. Send an update, even if you don’t have the complete solution yet.
• Offer 24/7 Multichannel Support: Let clients reach you via chat, email, phone, or social media from any time zone, any channel. Using AI in subscription management can also help, as AI chatbots can provide round-the-clock support.
• Assign Dedicated Account Managers: These will act as the single point of contact for your large enterprise clients, ensuring priority support.
• Solicit Feedback After Every Interaction: Send a one-question survey (“How did we do?”) immediately after each ticket closes. Use that data to coach your team and identify high performers.

Most customers prefer phone support, especially for complex issues, so make sure you offer that.

Image via Zendesk

7. Ask for Feedback and Act on It

Gathering and acting on customer feedback shows you value your users’ voices, which helps improve your customer retention rate in the long run.

Here are some ways in which you can collect feedback to improve your customer retention rate.

• Use Short, Targeted Surveys

• What to Do: Send a one-question NPS or CSAT poll after key events (first login, support ticket close, renewal).

• Why It Works: High response rates and clear sentiment scores help you spot at-risk accounts quickly.

• Track Feedback via Your Support and Sales Channels

• What to Do: Tag incoming support tickets, chat transcripts, and sales calls with themes (e.g., “integration issue,” “SaaS pricing confusion”). Review trends weekly to find common customer pain points and challenges.

• Why It Works: You can turn routine conversations into prioritised product insights and spot common roadblocks before they drive churn.

• Host Customer Interviews and Focus Groups

• What to Do: Schedule 30-minute calls with a rotating mix of power customers, churned clients, and new accounts. Ask open-ended questions about their goals and pain points.

• Why It Works: These conversations will reveal the context that surveys miss and uncover ideas for high-impact improvements.

Collecting feedback is only half the battle, as you also need to act on it, so make sure you include it in your customer retention strategy.

Here are some tips to help you follow through on feedback to improve your customer retention rate.

• Acknowledge every submission with a thank-you email or in-app notification.
• Score requests on how many customers they affect and how much work they require.
• Commit to making at least two customer-driven improvements each quarter.
• Publish a public roadmap or “What’s New” page that highlights customer-requested features.
• After you release a change, track adoption rates, support-ticket volume, and churn among affected users.
• Use those metrics to refine which feedback channels you lean on most to boost customer retention.

Also Read:

• Revenue Growth Management: What Is It and Why It’s Important
• Essential Subscription Business Metrics To Track

FAQ

Tracking customer data to identify and prevent potential churn, having a customer-centric attitude, and providing great onboarding and customer support are some of the ways in which you can improve your customer retention rate.

Rewards, Relevance, and Recognition are the 3 Rs of customer retention, which are used mainly in the context of customer retention programs. Creating engaging loyalty programs based on these principles can help you improve your customer retention rate.

Here’s how you can calculate your customer retention rate.

Customer Retention Rate = 

(Customers at End of Period)− (New Customers Acquired) ×100 / Customers at Start of Period

Consistent value delivery is the key to improving the customer retention rate. Customers stay when your product continually solves their evolving needs.

Here are some ways in which Younium can help you improve your customer retention rate.

• Automate Renewals & Dunning: Reduce involuntary churn by handling payment retries, reminders, and smart retry logic.
• Usage & Health Analytics: Spot declining product engagement early and trigger proactive outreach.
• Flexible Subscription Models: Let customers upgrade, downgrade, or bundle services easily, so they can scale their plans as needed.
• Data-Backed Decision Making: Track key metrics like churn rate and customer lifetime value to identify trends and take proactive measures to retain customers.

Ready to Improve Your Customer Retention Strategy?

The B2B SaaS landscape is becoming increasingly competitive. If your sole strategy is working endlessly to keep bringing in new customers, you will likely fail.

You need to focus on retaining existing customers and gaining recurring revenue to succeed, and the customer retention tactics listed above can help you improve your customer retention rate.

Implement a few or all of these to improve your customer retention rate and build a community of loyal customers.

If you need an end-to-end solution to manage your B2B subscription management needs, try Younium. Get a demo to see what features it offers and how they can help you grow your B2B SaaS business.