Salesforce Retention Investigation: Tracing the Root Cause of a 35% Decline

Retention at Salesforce has fallen by 35%. How would you work out what caused it? ```hint Pin down the metric first A 35% fall in contract renewals and a 35% fall in returning active users point to very different causes and timescales. Settle which one you are looking at, and how fast it fell, before generating hypotheses. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Does retention here mean accounts renewing their contracts, revenue kept at renewal, or users who stay active from week to week? - Is the 35% a relative decline or a drop in percentage points, and did it happen over days or across a quarter? - Is the drop across every Salesforce product, or in one cloud, edition or surface such as the mobile app? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - Clarifying the retention definition, the size of the 35% and the timing of the drop before forming hypotheses - Ruling out tracking, definition and data-pipeline changes against an independent source - Segmenting by product, edition, account size, region, user role, surface and cohort, and checking for mix shift - Ordered internal and external hypotheses that fit a seat-based business product, each with a way to confirm or reject it - A fix, communication with affected customers, and alerts that would catch a repeat earlier ### Follow-up Questions - Suppose the drop is limited to accounts that signed up in the last two quarters. What would you look at next? - How would your investigation change if retention meant contract renewals rather than active users? - Which leading indicator would have warned you weeks before the drop showed up?