#Tableau - Calculate Customer Retention & Cohort Analysis

In this tip, I’m going to show you how to analyze customer retention and conduct cohort analysis in Tableau.

With **Cohort analysis** you group your users based on a shared characteristic to better track and understand their behaviors. Cohort analysis is typically used to understand customer churn or retention.

Cohort analysis is nearly always done for an app launch.
- First, down the view, the users are divided into cohorts based on when they first installed the app
- Then, across the view, the users are tracked for 10 days after the launch to see who continued to use it.

Comparing these two groups allows us to see when users are churning so that we can then investigate why.

[SiamdhaniNurcahyo]

Short, Clear, and Straight to the Point. Excellent.

[yuji]

Still remember how excited when I first learned how to do Cohort analysis in Tableau using LOD back then... It's insanely HELPFUL!
As someone who oversees several EC stores' BI analytics, Cohort & Retention analysis is one of the essential I run regularly... at the end of the day, it all comes down to RETENTION, RETENTION, RETENTION!

[codipeterson]

Brilliant explanation. So easy to understand. Thank you.

[briankern]

Hey Andy, I want to thank you for this super helpful video! Your instructions were very clear. I have an enhancement to the retention rate line graph that makes it more accurate by taking the average of the retention rates for each cohort at the given length of time from when they first purchased.

AVG(
{ FIXED [Customers First Purchase Quarter], [Elapsed Quarters]:
COUNTD([Email])
/
sum([Customers per First Quarter])}
)

[anthonyfernandezgonzalez]

Wow Andy, another magnificient lesson, so happy to learn with you. i am going to share this video on LinkedIn. Kind Regards from Costa Rica.

[blackmayza]

This was great some nifty features I could leverage in my next build. Thanks, Andy!

[Ligerpride]

Very innovative. Thank you for this tip as always.

Happy Christmas.

[youness]

Excellent 👌 Like usual ... Very actionable. Many Thanks Andy !

[datawoj]

Thanks Andy. Really great easy to follow tutorial. So useful for marketing teams as well.

[paigenorthrup]

This was super helpful! Wondering what you would suggest if we want to look at something like adherence levels over time instead of just retention over time?

[sunnybrunchandpotatoes]

Thanks for the video - super clear and helpful! I was wondering what should be done when cells show up as blanks because no users visited the app during that period?

[AbdelrahmanTarek-ej]

Beautiful channel and I wish you the best in your life for spreading the knowledge in such a beautiful way, I just did not understand the elapsed quarters part, Could someone please explain?

[shanefife]

Thanks Andy, do you have a way of analyzing the cohort from the first day they started? In my instance, I'm using term (Education), so date difference wouldn't work here. The cohort's first term is their cohort name like 202008 which I'm trying to compare against 202108's first term. I'm thinking a partition might be necessary but wanted to reach out first.

[seekluv]

Is there a resource somewhere that explains the why and what more for these types of calculations?

[toludoyinshopein]

Great! Thank you Andy, Is there a tutorial on how to rename column, for example the Quarter of.... column.

[coconutadventuresjazzykaur]

Hey Andy, I understand the Retention Rate graph but I am getting lost on the point of the Elapsed Quarters Graph. What exactly is the graph is trying to relay? it seems the exact same as the retnetion graph except now the triangle is angled another way with the same results. the top header shows 1, 2, 3 etc instead of the Quarter names. Is that the only point of showing the retention graph as an elapsed graph?

[yusrinaamaliah]

Thankyou Andy, what if I want to add a new table at last of cohort table that explain the average of retention rate through out the year? Is it possible? If yes then how to make it? Thankyouuu

[federicoantognazza]

Hi Andy, if I want to highlight the quarters when the customer make use the product by using another graph when I can select the single customer how should I implement that? I tried to add the customer as attribute but doesn't work

[MrsScootsey]

In terms of an employee retention cohort chart. I would like to do difference between hire date and termination date for the elapsed months. It does the calc correct for the ones who have termination dates but doesn’t display the months that don’t have any terminations. I’d like to show all months across the top regardless of if they have a termination. Any thoughts?

[simonsoltanian]

Hey Andy, thanks. Can you please create an example of churn rate per month for customers?