churn
The umbrella metric.
voluntary churn
Voluntary churn is cancellation by customer choice — they still could pay, but they don't want to anymore. Indicates product-market-fit issues, support failures, lifecycle end (project finished, business closed), or competitive displacement. Usually 50-70% of total churn at $5K-$500K ARR SaaS.
In context.
Porchops doesn't try to prevent every voluntary cancel. The cancel survey + in-product offer surface (Churnkey-style) belongs to vendors specialized in that. Porchops's role is the early-warning system — Hank flags silent customers before they reach the cancel form.
Voluntary churn signals are upstream of the cancel itself. Usage drops, support tickets spike, support tone changes, login frequency declines. Hank watches for these and surfaces flags before the cancel happens.
Concrete instances.
Customer cancelled saying "I'm shutting down my business." — natural lifecycle end, not preventable.
Customer cancelled saying "too expensive." — pricing-tier issue; potentially recoverable with a downgrade conversation.
Customer cancelled saying "competitor X has feature Y." — competitive displacement; data point for product roadmap.
Customer went silent for 90 days; Hank flagged at day 60; founder reached out; customer admitted they'd been considering cancel; conversation saved the relationship.
Common questions.
Can voluntary churn be prevented?
Some. Hank's silent-customer flags catch customers considering cancel before they pull the trigger. Pricing-tier conversations can save "too expensive" cancels. Lifecycle-end and competitive-displacement cancels are usually not preventable.
Should I run a cancel survey?
Yes if the survey is short (1-2 questions) and respects the customer's time. Cancel surveys + in-product offers (Churnkey-style) recover 5-15% of voluntary cancels. Not porchops's surface; pair with a specialized vendor.