Does your business exist in a one-off world? Once you’ve had the pleasure of bringing in a new customer, completed the transaction and received payment, what’s the likelihood of that customer doing business with you again? Acquiring new customers are a feather in your cap and your reason for being but as Dad told me, when it comes to money it’s not what you make, it’s what you keep. That bit of wisdom refers not only to business and living expenses: it also refers to your ability to keep customers coming back.

The expected percentage of repeat customers is different for every business, but it’s widely known that customer loyalty, demonstrated by repeat business, is a success factor and customer churn, also known as customer attrition and refers to the rate that customers disappear from your business, ought to be limited. Nurturing customer loyalty that translates into repeat business and adds to the long-term value of your customers is a much better use of your resources than constantly chasing new customers—even though attracting new customers is an eternal business necessity. See below a sample of customer retention statistics sorted by industry. How does your customer list look in comparison?

Top Customer Retention Stats in 2025 (source: Exploding Topics September 12, 2025)

• Media services customer retention rate (84%).
• Professional services customer retention rate (84%)
• Tech/IT services customer retention rate 81%
• IT/software services customer retention rate 77%
• Consumer services customer retention rate 67%
• Hospitality/travel/restaurant customer retention rate 55%.
• Facebook 24-month user retention rate 69.6%
• LinkedIn 24-month user retention rate 59% (estimate–LinkedIn does not release this metric)
• Instagram 24-month user retention rate 39.1%
• Pinterest 24-month user retention rate 37.5%
• Snapchat 24-month user retention rate 30.2%
• Twitter/ X 24-month user retention rate 22.9%
• Customers who have a positive experience spend 140% more than those who have a bad experience.
• Email is the top delivery method used to contact customers and encourage retention (89%)
• 75% is the average customer retention rate across all industries
• 60% of customers believe that good customer service is essential to promote customer retention.

Owners and leaders of what is probably the majority of commercial enterprises are inclined to believe the prevailing opinion that claims it costs the average business entity 5x more to bring in a new customer than it costs to keep an existing customer. In fact, research done by Frederick Reichheld of Bain & Company found that increasing customer retention rates by just 5% can increase profit anywhere from 25% to as much as 95%. The standard advice about customer retention appears to be still valid, but thought leaders now warn that hyper-prioritizing customer retention introduces the risk of losing focus on what really matters—connecting with customers and delivering value. Freelancers and business leaders must understand which customers are worthy of receiving resources intended to recruit their business and which are worthy of resources intended to keep their business. In that way, finding a balance between the two apparently opposed, but nevertheless important, customer segments can be achieved.

When considering how much to spend to either acquire or retain customers, it’s essential to consider the customer’s lifetime value (CLV), the long-term revenue potential of a customer. When discussing business decisions about attracting new customers and keeping existing customers, University of Pennsylvania/ Wharton Business School Marketing Professor Peter Fader told Forbes Magazine Senior Contributor Blake Morgan, “Here’s my take on that old belief: who cares? Decisions about customer acquisition, retention and development shouldn’t be driven by cost considerations—they should be based on future value.”

Still, getting ghosted by customers is not to be disingenuously explained away. You need to know what motivated now former customers to stop doing business with you. Then you must fix the problem(s). Unfulfilled expectations are known to result in high churn rates as customers jump ship and either take up with a competitor or do without. You can calculate your company’s churn rate by dividing the number of customers you worked with during a specific time period by the number of customers you worked with at the start of that time period. Quarterly, semi-annual, or annual churn calculations will give useful insights to Freelance professionals and other business owners.

Common causes of customer churn

• Difficult user experience: if some aspect of using the product or service is frustrating, customers are likely to use the product/service less often and they’ll be unlikely to recommend it to friends.
• Unsatisfying customer experience: if customers do not feel welcome, or if the process of doing business is disorganized and appears unprofessional, it leaves a bad impression. Furthermore, many customers expect a personalized experience and would like your company to periodically introduce new features or upgrades to your product or service that add functionality, luxury, or other distinction that heightens the experience. If this expectation is unfulfilled, some customers will leave.
• Competitor intervention: every business has competitors, but it is important to discover why customers think the grass is greener somewhere else. Are those customers a bad fit for your business, or was your offering a poor product/market fit for them all along? Alternatively, might some customers be more price-sensitive of late and feel compelled to explore lower-priced solutions? Or, is there something you are doing—or not doing? Once you figure out the cause of the ghosting, you can decide who is worth working to keep and who can be let go.
• Incomplete onboarding: it is beneficial to teach buyers how to appropriately utilize the product or service that’s been purchased and coaching them on the optimal use of the service or product purchased is especially urgent when the customer has paid several hundred to several thousand dollars. An onboarding process that provides adequate user education will also address customer expectations of personalization and counteract difficult user experiences and, in most cases, head off an unsatisfactory customer experience.

Minimize customer churn

There will always be customers who leave your company to take up with another and the reasons for that are varied—needs evolve, budgets shrink, competitors appear. Nevertheless, directing your focus to customer priorities and expectations to shape your delivery of positive experiences will minimize customer churn and maximize customer satisfaction and retention. In short, make it rewarding to do business with your organization. It has been shown (see above) that the impact of a satisfying and memorable customer experience is enormous— customers spend 140% more if their past experience with a business is positive compared to those customers who encounter a negative experience. Top companies know how important customer experience is in maintaining high retention. The marketing pros at Hubspot suggest a short list of practices that will limit customer churn.

• Invite customer feedback by creating a short survey to send to customers you’ve worked with over the past four or five years. It’s important to know what customers perceive as your company’s strengths and weaknesses and get insight into how their needs and expectations have evolved. Besides, you might even provide incentive for a lapsed client to return!
• Provide excellent customer service, from onboading to after-sale support. Define a user roadmap, especially for new customers.
• Create a welcoming and supportive customer experience. Community building is a powerful engagement strategy that keeps customers talking about your brand. Use social media to create a community for customers and use it to generate loyalty that creates referrals and repeat business.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: © SCMP Pictures. Shoppers riding the escalators in Causeway Bay, Hong Kong Island (2015).