How a Product-Led Retention Overhaul Reduced Churn by 76%

COMPANY NAME
Salesforce (Internal)

WHERE THEY WERE BEFORE
Following the acquisition of MapAnything, Salesforce Maps inherited a diverse customer base with varying levels of product understanding and multiple usage patterns. As the product scaled inside Salesforce, internal usage and retention data began to reveal a serious issue. Customer churn was significantly higher than acceptable benchmarks for an enterprise SaaS product.

With churn exceeding 25 percent, the data indicated that users were not consistently finding long-term value. In a startup environment, churn at this level would stall growth and undermine confidence. Even within Salesforce, these numbers represented a clear risk to revenue predictability, customer trust, and confidence in long-term product-market fit.

Leadership needed clarity. Why were users leaving? Why were customers failing to adopt the product beyond early usage? Which friction points or value gaps were quietly weakening retention? Without strong retention, acquisition alone could not sustain healthy growth.

PROBLEMS
Internally, churn remained elevated across multiple customer segments. Users would onboard, attempt initial workflows, and then disengage. Many never returned after their second or third interaction.

Usability issues, unclear workflows, low feature discoverability, and mismatched expectations contributed to attrition. In several areas, subtle UX friction reduced user confidence and made it harder to successfully complete core workflows. These patterns weakened retention signals and made it difficult to confidently demonstrate durable product-market fit.

MY ROLE
As the Product Manager responsible for retention, adoption, and long-term engagement within Salesforce Maps, reducing churn was a core part of my ownership. I led an internal effort to identify the root causes of attrition and guide product changes that would strengthen long-term retention.

This work included detailed data analysis, customer interviews, behavioral pattern mapping, and close collaboration with engineering, design, sales, and customer success teams. I focused on identifying where users experienced friction, where value was unclear, and where workflows failed to support repeat usage.

Based on these insights, I guided changes to key workflows, simplified onboarding and guidance, improved feature visibility, and aligned customer-facing messaging across enablement and support teams. The goal was to ensure users could consistently reach value and feel confident continuing to use the product over time.

BENEFITS OF THEM MAKING THE CHANGE
As a result of these internal product improvements, retention-critical workflows became clearer and easier to complete. Users gained confidence in the product, adoption stabilized, and renewal behavior became more predictable.

These changes strengthened long-term retention, improved product-market fit signals, and created a more compelling revenue and growth narrative for leadership. Salesforce Maps became better positioned as a mature, scalable solution within the Salesforce product portfolio.

IMPRESSIVE MEASURABLE METRICS

• 76% reduction in churn (from 26% to 6%)

• Stronger long-term retention durability across customer cohorts

• Improved renewal predictability across multiple customer segments

  
  

WHERE THEY ARE NOW
Salesforce Maps now maintains churn performance in line with top-performing enterprise SaaS products. This improvement supported larger customer adoption, stronger renewal confidence, and expansion into new markets with significantly reduced retention risk.

The following case study highlights product leadership and outcomes achieved in prior corporate roles before founding ProductGrowth Labs.