Customer Retention Rate (CRR)

Percentage of existing customers who stay.

CRR = ((Customers at end − New customers) / Customers at start) × 100%

What it measures

Percentage of existing customers who remain active over a period. The key is excluding new customers: you're measuring whether people who were already customers stayed.

Benchmarks

Subscription businesses: Target 90%+ monthly retention
Enterprise SaaS: Target 95%+ monthly retention

What to watch

Rising: Your existing customers are stickier. Even small retention improvements compound dramatically over time.
Falling: Something is driving existing customers away. Segment by cohort, tenure, and usage patterns to find who's leaving and when. Early-tenure churn points to onboarding issues; late-tenure churn suggests value erosion.

In practice

A fitness app saw CRR drop from 85% to 78% after adding new workout types. The new content overwhelmed the home screen, and existing users couldn't find their saved workouts. Restoring a "My Workouts" quick-access tab recovered retention to 87%.