The Growth of Customer Rates in the Business: What They Are and How to Accelerate They

Jan 9, 2025

The rate of growth for customers is an indicator of the overall health of your company.

As with your houseplant of choice, you can understand the details of your growth in your business from your customers growth rate. The greater your growth rate, the better the future prospects of your business.

The following information will help you to know about customer growth rates, including how to determine your customers growth rate and strategies for increasing customer growth in your organization.

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What is the customer increase rate?

The rate of growth for customers is an important metric to measure the speed that a business acquires and keeps customers who are interested in the product or service they offer. Your customer growth rate is a key indicator of the health of your business - a positive growth rate shows there is demand for your product and your client base is expanding.

Why is it important to monitor the rate of growth of customers?

The rate of growth in your customer base is a key performance indicator (KPI) which you can utilize to gauge the the demand for your item or service within a given time period.

Here are 5 top ways to measure customer growth in your business.

The most important indicator of the health of a business

Your customer growth rate is an indicator of your business' health. An enlightened business should have a good customer growth rate, which indicates that there's an appetite for the products or services and you're able to convert that demand into paying customers in your book.

  1. Predict recurring revenue
      Growth in customer numbers is an important indicator of annual recurring revenue (ARR) in subscription-based companies. When your client base grows, your ARR will also rise. When you monitor your customer's growth rate throughout time, you'll be able to gain a better understanding of the revenue growth month-to-month, and predict future growth.
  2. Seasonal changes in track
      By measuring your customer growth in time, you will get a better understanding of how client growth changes throughout the year. This will allow you to track and predict the seasonal shifts. This will help you design your customer engagement strategies better all through the entire year.
  3. Learn about customer engagement
      The high growth rate of customers suggests good customer engagement from both your clients and the audience. This can be thanks to several factors, including your marketing efforts, your customers' education and your position. If your customer base is increasing, that's a good indication of engagement from your customers. And the opposite is true also.
  4. Attract investment
      If you're hoping to draw the attention of investors High growth rates of customers can be a good indicator for investors that your company has the capacity to grow. It's one of many factors investors may use.

How to calculate the rate of growth for customers

For calculating the growth rate of customers for your business In order to calculate the growth rate of your customers, you must collect information on the number of customers you're acquiring each month.

Below are some metrics that you will have to keep track of:

  • customers at the end of Month This represents the total amount of clients your company has at the close of a particular period. It is generally, one calendar month.
  • Customers at the beginning of the month Total number of customers your business is able to count at the beginning of any given time period, typically, one calendar month.

Once you've gathered this information You can then employ the formula following to calculate your customer percentage of growth.

Customer growth rate formula

The customer growth rate formula is:

  Customers Growth Rate = ((Number of customers at the Ende of Month - Number of customers at the beginning of month) or Number of Customers at Start of the Month) * 100  

Here's an example of the formula in use:

If your company was able to count 5,000 customers at beginning of January and 5,500 customers at the end of January, the formula to calculate customer growth would look like this.

Customers Growth Rate is ((5,500 5500 - 5,000) * 5,000) * 100 = 10 percent

For this instance, the customer growth rate is 10 per cent, meaning that you have had 10% growth in the number of customers throughout January. It's a good way to start the year.

Three factors influence customer growth rate

There are several factors that will affect the development rate over any time. Here are 3 factors you should keep in mind.

  • Strategies for acquisition: Depending on the acquisition strategies your business is using, your customer increase rate can go up or down.
  • In order to increase your customer base You must be maintaining the customers you've acquired. If customers are churning they will have a negative impact on your customer growth rate.
  • Conditions in the market: There are external factors which can affect customer growth, which include variations in seasons, changes in industry trends as well as competition and economic trends. Many of these might be out of the scope of.

What factors can adversely impact the growth of customers?

There's also a wide range of headwinds common to all businesses that could influence the rate of growth for customers within your business. Here are 3 factors that keep customer growth rates low.

Lack of customer engagement

Low customer engagement may negatively impact customer growth rates by impacting the acquisition of customers, retention as well as expansion.

If your customers aren't engaged in your products and business, you'll be unable to keep your client increase. This may be due to a range of different factors that include poor customer experience or customer service that is not up to par or the absence of onboarding or educational materials for your customers.

Customer churn is high

If you focus solely on the number of people that come in, you're not getting the full picture. You also need to take an examination of the number of customers who have left your business when they sign up, or are choosing not to renew their contracts.

Churning of customers has a big effect on your growth rate. It is important to understand your customer churn rate in relation to your customer growth rate to understand the health of your business overall - and shift the focus from customer acquisition to customer retention.

To understand the nature of customer churn within your business Use the following formula to determine churn of customers:

  Customer churn = (Lost customers/Total Customers at the beginning of the Time Period) 100  

Poor customer success

If you're not achieving their goals with your products, it can have a serious impact on your growth rate for customers. A poor customer experience can impact your customer growth rates in a variety of different ways, including:

  • Less referrals: If customers aren't getting the outcomes they're looking for with your service or product, they're unlikely to refer them to friends or colleagues. A lower number of referrals will mean fewer customers.
  • Less brand advocacy: When customers are satisfied, they're more likely to post their triumphs, leave favorable reviews and write about your products online. But like referrals, your customers will be less likely to turn into advocates for your brand if they'ren't doing well.
  • Lower renewals: On the most extreme failure to satisfy customers could negatively affect renewals, increasing the likelihood of customers churning. This could have a huge impact on your customer growth rate if left unchecked.

Customer success is an important factor aiding in increasing customer growth, especially when it comes to customer retention and support.

The Ultimate Guide to Customer Success: Download Now

Six strategies to boost customer growth rates

There are a few strategies that you can employ to improve the rate of growth for your customer in order to increase revenue recurring in your organization.

   1. Optimize your customer acquisition channels


 Customer acquisition is the most important element that determines customer growth rates. To boost your customer increase rate, you should review your customer acquisition channels and how you currently advertise your products and services.It is the time to try new customer acquisition channels or shift your time and budget towards the channel with the greatest returns. For example, if you're seeing the best results with organic search is a great indicator to invest more into your SEO and contents. Take a look at what's doing the best for your business.

  2. Make use of customer recommendations

The most effective strategy to increase customer growth rate is to leverage your existing customers to get more referrals. Then, transform them into brand ambassadors.

Here are some guidelines to help you achieve exactly this.

  • Make use of customer education. IDC found that referrals were number three of the most frequently reported benefits of customer education programs. When you make sure that customers are aware of the value of your product and services, they're likely to refer you to friends.
  • Create a referral program: Build a official customer referral system to make making referrals more easy and efficient - create customer referral templates to allow your clients to refer customers quick.
  • Provide incentives: Incentivize your current customers to recommend their friends and colleagues with extra rewards within your referral program, including rewards like coupons, freebies, merchandise and much many more.

Customers you already have represent your greatest assets. Use them to help you gain more customers and increase your growth rate.

  3. Utilize social evidence

Social proof is a powerful marketing and sales technique to increase the number of customers who are on your books - and it's an essential tool for subscription-model businesses. Prospective customers need to know who's making use of your services and are loving them before making an purchase.

Here are some ways to use social proof to boost the rate of growth for your customer:

  • Highlight your existing customers: Use social proof from your existing clients - such as testimonials, logos of customers, and case studies across all channels of marketing to assist in the acquisition of customers.
  • Get user-generated content: Happy customers are your secret weapon. Use UGC such as videos, reviews and other community-generated content to create human-to-human connections with your prospective customers.
  • Show off integrations: If your product integrates with other products, show these to increase confidence and trust with the people who will be using your product. And don't forget to tell the existing customers about it too.

Social proof could be used to acquire and retain clients, increase recommendations and advocacy, and increase customer growth over time.

  4. Onboarding of customers by Streamline

The first impressions count. If new customers are on board with your business make sure you provide them with a complete introduction program that will ensure they're off to a good start using your services.

The best customer onboarding programs are simple, smooth, and timely. Deliver impactful learning experiences beginning from the first day to let your clients see the possibilities using your services and products and inspire them to take action.

There is a variety of customer onboarding strategies which can yield great results, including:

  • Self-led online courses
  • Video atboarding
  • Knowledge Hub
  • Onboarding webinars

Offer your customers a dedicated place they can go to find out how they can get started with your service - and most importantly, they should receive personalized support in case they require it. This can help to increase customer retention and boost referrals. The result? This is good news for the rate of growth for your customers.

  5. Review positioning and benefits messaging

In order to increase the rate of growth for customers in your organization, conduct the review of your branding and your messaging in order to reach your ideal customers.

This could comprise:

  • Defining the characteristics that make your brand distinctive
  • Chatting with customers
  • Investigating what your competition are doing

It is possible to test and tweak your strategy and message multiple times before you can determine what speaks to your audience especially during the first stages of launching a new product or service.

  6. Focus on customer success

Intentionally retaining your current customers is key to keeping the rate of growth for your customers. To increase the number of renewals you can offer, concentrate on providing rapid wins to your clients as quickly as you can to help them see instant benefits from your products and services.

There's a huge range of strategies to help customers succeed that which you can implement to help your clients achieve their goals and objectives such as:

  • Customer education Customer education is a crucial tool that can boost customer success in your organization at every stage of the customer journey - including onboarding, adoption renewals, expansion, and onboarding.
  • Personalized customer support: Some customers will need extra help by your staff - this is why personalized customer support comes in. If possible, provide omnichannel customer support so customers can be contact via most convenient channels for them. This includes live chat, email, and much more.
  • Expansion deals: Properly timed extensions can increase the success of your customers by providing customers the features and functionality that they require to achieve their targets. If you've established a good relation with your customers you'll know when expansion is the most appropriate option for them and use add-ons including upsells, cross-sells, and upsells in order to allow customers to get the most profit from your offerings.

The strategies to help customers succeed include a variety of strategies you can use to increase your customer retention by delivering continuous benefit throughout the entire customer's lifecycle beyond renewal time.

The significance of education to customers in their customer growth

Education of customers is an effective technique for increasing customer loyalty that will help you attract, acquire, and retain new customers. Learn how to use customer education to boost your customer growth rate.

Acquiring customers

An effective customer education plan will attract new customers to your organization - while helping them learn something new, improve their capabilities, and meet their goals.

By creating educational content targeted to your customers as well as their issues it is possible to set up your offerings as easy solution to their issues.

The ability to retain and renew

The renewal process is an essential step on the journey of a customer for all subscription-based businesses. It's also one of the most significant factors that affect your customer's growth.

Through a robust programme of customer education that is ongoing, you will be able to provide continuous benefits to your clients through deeply impactful and inspiring educational experiences. By prioritizing customer education it will help you build more solid, longer-lasting relations with your clients based on superior service, regular quality, and a deeper involvement.

Account expansion

Customer education can also increase customer expansion rates through providing up-to-date information to customers that help them maximize the value of the products you offer. When you implement a customer success plan, expansion of customers becomes a natural element of your discussion.

That's why 51% of CEOs say they're focusing on expanding customer education in 2024, to secure additional cross-sells, upsells and add-ons.

A good example is a customer academy that helps your clients learn improve their jobs then becomes an avenue to promote an even more sophisticated product that helps them put their newly acquired knowledge to use.

Start tracking your customer growth rate today

The rate of growth of customers plays the potential to be a major factor in businesses with recurring revenue. If you're a subscription-based business the rate of growth in your customers is an excellent indicator of your annual recurring revenues (ARR ).

It's simple--if you acquire new customers and retain your existing customers the ARR of your business will rise with time. That's great news for your company.

Growth rates of customers give companies an insight into their business's performance. They reveal the amount of clients you're winning over in comparison to those that are turning.

Investing in your customer success will go beyond satisfying expectations. It's about going above and beyond the expectations of your customers. Through enhancing support and customer service by enhancing onboarding and resource management as well as implementing a customer education program, you'll be able to improve your performance while providing your customers with self-serve resources and customised learning routes.

Ready to elevate your customer-success approach to the next step?

The Ultimate Guide to Customer Success: Download Now

  Discover how your business can leverage customer education to enhance customer success today.  

  When your customers win, so does your business.  

  Are you prepared to start this transformational journey?