The churn rate measures a company's loss of subscribers for a given period of time.
Churn rates can be applied to subscription-based businesses as well as to the number of employees that leave a firm. It can also be thought of as recurring customers leaving the company.
The churn rate and growth rate are diametrically opposite factors, as the former measures the loss of customers, and the other measures the acquisition of customers.
For a company to experience growth, it must ensure that its new subscriptions are higher than its lost subscriptions in a given period.
Each industry will have a different average churn rate that companies can compare themselves with to understand their competitiveness.