Tiers and churn risk
Every customer wears one of five tiers, and nobody in your business assigns it. Wash Junkie works it out from their orders, their money and the calendar, every time the page is read. Here are the rules, exactly.
The five tiers, in the order they are tested
The tests run top to bottom and the first one that matches wins. Nothing below it is considered.
| Order | Tier | The rule |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Churned | Their last order was 90 or more days ago |
| 2 | New | They have 3 or fewer orders, or you added them within the last 30 days |
| 3 | At risk | They owe money and have either 10 or more orders or $150,000 of lifetime spend |
| 4 | At risk | Their last order was 45 or more days ago, or they owe money and have spent $80,000 |
| 5 | VIP | Lifetime spend of $400,000 or more, or 40 or more orders |
| 6 | Regular | Everybody else |
Reading down that list explains most of the surprises:
- A customer with three orders is New however long they have been with you — unless they have gone quiet for 90 days, in which case they are Churned.
- Somebody you added last week is New even if they have ordered ten times since, because rule 2 catches them before rule 5 can.
- A heavy spender who owes you money across ten orders reads At risk, not VIP. Rule 3 is tested first, and money owed by your best customers is the thing worth seeing.
- Somebody with no orders at all is New. With no last order there is nothing to have gone quiet.
The VIP and At risk amounts are fixed figures in your own currency, not shares of your book. The Spend filter on the customer directory is the opposite — percentiles — so the two answer different questions and will not always agree.
The churn risk score
The score is 0 to 99 and follows from the tier, so it never contradicts it.
| Tier | Score | How it moves |
|---|---|---|
| VIP | 5–15 | Starts at 15, drops a point for every ten orders |
| Regular | 15–35 | 15, plus a point for each day since their last order after the first, plus six if they owe |
| New | 30–45 | 30, plus four for every order short of four |
| At risk | 60–79 | 60, plus the days since their last order, plus ten if they owe |
| Churned | 90–99 | 90, plus one for every ten days beyond the ninetieth |
On the record, the tile reads Healthy at 30 or below, Monitor from 31 to 60, and High — act now above 60.
None of it is editable, and that is the point
There is no field for a tier and no field for a score. Editing a customer changes their name, phone number, email and address — nothing else. Both figures are recomputed from scratch every time you open the list or the record, which means they move on their own: an order placed drops a churn score, money collected can lift somebody out of At risk, and a customer becomes Churned on the ninetieth quiet day without anybody touching anything.
So a tier is worth acting on rather than correcting. The two that ask for something are At risk and Churned, and what they usually ask for is either a call or a payment reminder.