How Clari Used AI to Predict Churn and Uncover Growth Opportunities

When Clari set out to tackle customer churn, they didn't expect to also uncover new avenues for growth. In a recent episode of Sound Bites with Battery Ventures' Bill Binch, Clari President Kevin Knieriem shared how his team, working with QuadSci, used AI and telemetry data to predict churn with unprecedented accuracy—and in the process, revealed hidden growth signals.

The Challenge: Seeing Beyond Traditional Health Scores

Every SaaS business wrestles with customer retention. Traditional tools like health scores and relationship trackers can only show a snapshot in time and often surface false positives. Clari wanted to go deeper, identifying leading indicators that could forecast customer contraction or churn up to a year in advance.

"We wanted to get ahead of it. Not just a quarter out—but four or eight quarters ahead."

The Solution: Partnering with QuadSci for Predictive Insights

To make that vision real, Clari partnered with QuadSci, which ingested more than 6 billion telemetry signals from Clari's post-sale systems, customer success data, contracts, and usage analytics.

QuadSci built a custom data science model that could detect subtle behavioral shifts in how customers used Clari's platform. From there, Clari integrated those predictive signals directly into its own systems and blended them seamlessly into its renewal and account management workflows.

"It gave our teams relevant, forward-looking data. Signals that showed us where to focus."

The Outcomes: Accuracy, Growth, and Time to Act

The results were transformative. The model was:

• 94% accurate in predicting churn 12 months in advance
• 90% accurate in predicting growth opportunities
• Able to pinpoint 80% of contractions six months ahead

More, some of the most valuable insights were counterintuitive. For example, a drop in support cases sometimes indicated customer disengagement, a pattern that traditional metrics would have missed.

"While we were looking for potential churn, we actually found growth signals. And that was just as important."

These insights gave Clari's customer success and account management teams time to act, folding the intelligence into their 13-week business cadence. With constantly refreshed data, they could stay ahead of risk and capitalize on emerging opportunities.

The Broader Impact: Product and Process Intelligence

Beyond retention, Clari's product team gained valuable feedback loops. The model highlighted which workflows performed well and which needed refinement, informing product improvements and future roadmap priorities.

"It's been a great partnership. One that we're going to continue."

The Power of the Partnership

This collaboration between Clari and QuadSci demonstrates what's possible when AI-driven predictive modeling meets operational execution. By connecting the dots across billions of data points, Clari not only reduced churn risk but also unlocked a new lens for growth, innovation, and customer understanding.