10 best customer churn prediction software of 2024

Customer churn is the bane of any business owner’s existence. You invest time, resources, and maybe even a slice of your soul into acquiring customers, only to watch them slip away. In the past, pinpointing the root causes of customer dissatisfaction involved guesswork and often came too late.

But with the rise of AI-powered customer service tools, teams can now monitor churn proactively. Explore how these innovations in customer churn software give businesses like yours the foresight to identify at-risk customers before they say goodbye.

More in this guide:

• What is customer churn prediction software?
• The 10 best churn prediction software
• Benefits of churn prediction software
• How to choose the right customer churn software
• Frequently asked questions
• Reduce customer churn with Zendesk

Customer churn prediction software proactively identifies customers at risk of leaving a service or product. It analyzes customer sentiment, satisfaction, support interactions, and other relevant customer experience key performance metrics (KPIs) to provide businesses with valuable insights for retaining customers.

Learn more about customer churn prediction software by reading about the options below.

1. Zendesk

Zendesk provides AI-powered customer experience software that enables businesses to predict and analyze customer churn. It's user-friendly, quick to set up, secure, and scalable to grow with your business and customer base.

The AI in Zendesk quality assurance software can analyze 100 percent of your customer interactions across all your support channels to gauge customer sentiment and predict churn risk. The Spotlight feature uses AI to pinpoint problematic cases and conversations that require urgent attention, allowing agents to identify at-risk customers and intervene before they churn.

Zendesk also delivers unparalleled insights into your operations. Real-time analytics on your overall support performance across all channels, including human and AI agents, allow you to monitor KPIs like response times and churn rates. By keeping a constant pulse on your support performance, you can identify areas for improvement and proactively address issues that might contribute to customer churn.

Additionally, Zendesk provides everything you need to deliver an exceptional customer experience from day one, empowering you to develop a proactive support strategy that enhances customer retention and fosters long-term loyalty. For example, its workflow automation tools, such as intelligent routing, use sentiment analysis to identify angry customers and prioritize their cases. These customers are automatically directed to the teams best equipped to address their concerns, preventing frustration from escalating into churn.

Pricing: Plans start at $25 per agent/month. A 14-day free trial is available.

Explore more Zendesk pricing plans.

2. Gainsight

Gainsight offers customer retention software that can help predict customer churn. The software uses machine learning algorithms to analyze customer data and identify at-risk customers. Gainsight also provides features for segmenting customer bases and monitoring customer health scores.

Beyond churn reduction, Gainsight offers other customer success tools. These can include functionalities for managing customer onboarding programs, tracking customer health over time, and facilitating customer communication.

Pricing: Contact Gainsight

Recommended reading: Learn how Gainsight integrates with Zendesk.

3. Hotjar

Hotjar offers website analytics software that shows user behavior and other customer experience metrics. It equips businesses with tools to identify potential roadblocks and frustrations that might contribute to customer churn. For example, Hotjar's session recordings allow companies to see how users interact with their website.

Features like heatmaps and click maps visually represent user clicks and attention patterns, revealing areas of low engagement or difficulty. Hotjar also provides features for gathering user feedback through surveys and polls.

Pricing: Plans start at $32 per month, billed annually. A free plan and a 30-day free trial are available.

4. ChurnZero

ChurnZero customer success software helps subscription-based businesses identify and retain at-risk customers. ChurnZero integrates with various data sources to view customer health, including product usage, support interactions, and renewal history. By analyzing this data, ChurnZero generates customer health scores that predict the likelihood of churn.

ChurnZero also equips customer success teams with tools to intervene when needed. These include features for automated communication, personalized onboarding journeys, and in-app walkthroughs.

Pricing: Contact ChurnZero

Recommended reading: Learn how ChurnZero integrates with Zendesk.

5. Pecan

Pecan offers a customer churn solution that creates churn prediction models using AI. Pecan's platform automates tasks like model definition and fine-tuning so businesses can build and deploy churn prediction models.

These churn prediction models analyze historical customer data to identify patterns and behaviors associated with customer churn. This allows businesses to identify customers at risk of churning and take targeted action to retain them.

Pricing: Plans start at $950 per month. A 7-day free trial is available.

6. Vitally

Vitally churn software allows customer success teams to manage customer health. Its real-time customer health scoring collects multiple data points about customer activity and sentiment, providing a snapshot of potential churn risk.

Its dashboards and reports let teams track metrics like churn rate and identify at-risk accounts. Beyond identifying at-risk customers, Vitally provides customer engagement tools, including functionalities for managing customer communication, setting up automated workflows, and collaborating across teams.

Pricing: Contact Vitally

7. Qualtrics XM

Qualtrics XM offers a customer experience management platform. It integrates various data sources to understand the customer journey, including operational data and customer feedback like surveys and reviews. This combined data allows Qualtrics XM to utilize analytics and machine learning to predict churn risk.

Qualtrics XM also has tools for closing the loop on customer feedback by enabling targeted interventions and automated actions, such as personalized communication with at-risk customers and tailored support offerings. Additionally, companies can use the customer feedback data to make product improvements based on customer insights.

Pricing: Contact Qualtrics

Recommended reading: Learn how Qualtrics integrates with Zendesk.

8. Churnly

Churnly offers customer churn prediction software with AI. By analyzing customer product usage, support interactions, and billing information, Churnly generates churn risk scores that predict the likelihood of customer cancellation.

Churnly also equips customer success teams with tools to intervene if the software detects churn risk. The software includes features for segmenting customer bases and creating targeted campaigns. Additionally, Churnly offers functionalities for in-app user engagement and personalized communication.

Pricing: Contact Churnly

9. Akkio

Akkio is another customer churn prediction software that uses AI to identify customers at risk of leaving. It analyzes customer data to uncover patterns and behaviors that indicate potential churn. Akkio then generates churn risk scores that predict the likelihood of a customer churning.

Akkio offers features like automated model building, sales forecasting, lead scoring, and customer feedback analysis. Businesses can deploy these tools to gain insights into their customer segments and key performance areas with churn prediction models.

Pricing: Plans start at $49 per user/month. A free trial is available.

10. Retently

Retently is customer churn software for subscription-based businesses. It utilizes machine learning to analyze customer behavior data and other trends to generate customer health scores that indicate the likelihood of a customer canceling their subscription.

Retently also provides tools to help businesses take action and improve customer retention. It includes features for segmenting customer bases and creating targeted campaigns.

Pricing: Plans start at $44 per user/month, billed annually. Seven-day and 14-day free trials are available.

By identifying customers who are at risk of churning, businesses can receive the following benefits:

• Improved customer retention: Customer churn prediction software improves customer retention by giving businesses critical insights to turn negative experiences into positive ones. For instance, an agent can follow up to save a relationship if a customer gives your support team a poor CSAT score.
• Increased revenue: Salvaging valuable relationships and retaining high-value clients leads to recurring revenue, upsell opportunities, and potential brand advocacy. For example, The Boston Globe newspaper uses a chatbot to optimize support for customers while also using the opportunity to promote upcoming events and digital offerings. As a result, it experienced a 10 percent increase in churn reduction rate.
• Greater operational efficiency: Instead of spreading retention efforts thin across your entire customer base, prioritize outreach and interventions for users at high risk of churn. AI can review all customer interactions for you, eliminating the need for manual processes and boosting efficiency.
• Enhanced understanding of the customer: Churn software dives deep into customer data and sheds light on why they might be dissatisfied. Businesses can gain valuable insights into their customer base by understanding why specific customer segments are churning. Degreed, the learning experience platform, used the customer insights it received from Zendesk to address customer issues proactively, leading to a 100 percent retention rate.

Overall, customer churn software is valuable for businesses that want to improve customer retention and their bottom line.

Selecting the right customer churn software requires careful consideration of several key factors. Here’s what to look for:

• Scalability: As your business grows, your customer base will expand. Choose software like Zendesk that seamlessly adapts to increasing customer volumes without compromising performance.
• AI: The best churn software leverages AI to analyze complex customer data sets and identify nuanced churn signals. For example, Zendesk QA leverages AI to identify churn risk, outliers, and escalations.
• Security: Churn software handles sensitive customer data, so robust data protection measures are paramount. Make sure the software complies with relevant customer data privacy regulations and offers encryption, access control, and secure data storage features.
• Fast setup and ease to use: A user-friendly experience is crucial for shortening training timelines, maximizing adoption, and ensuring fast time to value. The software should be easy to navigate, with clear data visualization and readily available reporting tools, so your team can quickly gain insights and take action.
• Low total cost of ownership: This factor considers expenses beyond the upfront purchase price, such as maintenance fees, training costs, and add-ons.

By assessing these criteria, you can choose customer churn software that empowers you to proactively retain customers and sustain growth.