churn-prevention
Helps your agent reduce customer loss. It's useful for creating strategies that keep customers using your service.
What it does
Helps prevent customers from canceling their services or subscriptions. This includes creating flows for when someone decides to leave, offering promotions to make them stay, or recovering failed payments.
When to use it
- ✓When many customers are canceling.
- ✓If subscription payments are frequently failing.
- ✓To create a friendlier process when someone decides to cancel.
Example of what to ask your AI
“Help me create a flow for when customers cancel, with a survey and an offer to make them stay.”
Want more? Open the sections below.
How to use
The easiest way: copy the message below and paste it into Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or any AI. It reads the skill and follows the instructions.
Skill link
Ready-to-paste message
How it works
It analyzes the reasons why customers cancel and proposes solutions like discounts, temporary pauses, or cheaper plans. It also helps recover payments that weren't processed.
Installation
Easiest way: copy the skill link and paste it into Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor asking it to follow the instructions.
In the terminal (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor), in your project folder:
npx skills add coreyhaines31/marketingskills --skill churn-preventionOr download just the file:
curl -L https://raw.githubusercontent.com/coreyhaines31/marketingskills/main/skills/churn-prevention/SKILL.md -o SKILL.mdTechnical content (original SKILL.md)
Original text by the author, straight from 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:
| Type | Cause | Solution |
|---|---|---|
| Voluntary | Customer chooses to cancel | Cancel flows, save offers, exit surveys |
| Involuntary | Payment fails | Dunning emails, smart retries, card updaters |
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:
| Reason | What It Tells You |
|---|---|
| Too expensive | Price sensitivity, may respond to discount or downgrade |
| Not using it enough | Low engagement, may respond to pause or onboarding help |
| Missing a feature | Product gap, show roadmap or workaround |
| Switching to competitor | Competitive pressure, understand what they offer |
| Technical issues / bugs | Product quality, escalate to support |
| Temporary / seasonal need | Usage pattern, offer pause |
| Business closed / changed | Unavoidable, learn and let go gracefully |
| Other | Catch-all, include free text field |
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:
| Cancel Reason | Primary Offer | Fallback Offer |
|---|---|---|
| Too expensive | Discount (20-30% for 2-3 months) | Downgrade to lower plan |
| Not using it enough | Pause (1-3 months) | Free onboarding session |
…
FAQ
Why do customers cancel?
Customers may cancel for many reasons, such as finding the price too high, not using the service enough, missing a feature, switching to a competitor, or technical issues.
What are 'voluntary' and 'involuntary' churn?
Voluntary churn is when the customer decides to cancel. Involuntary churn is when the subscription is canceled because the payment failed.
What kind of offers can I make to retain a customer?
You can offer discounts, allow them to pause their subscription for a while, suggest a cheaper plan, or even personal outreach to better understand the issue.
Details
Original description by the author
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,'
Popularity
- GitHub stars
- 55k
- Ranking position
- #1759
- License
- MIT
- Updated
- 10/15/2026
Comments
- …
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