Customer retention and cohort analysis are important tools for businesses to understand and improve the performance of their products or services. Tableau Desktop is a powerful data visualization tool that can help you conduct these analyses with ease. In this article, we will go over the steps for conducting customer retention and cohort analysis in Tableau Desktop.

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Step 1: Prepare Your Data The first step in conducting customer retention and cohort analysis in Tableau Desktop is to prepare your data. This means ensuring that your data is clean, accurate, and in the proper format. You should also create a unique ID for each customer, such as a customer ID or email address, so that you can track their behavior over time.

Step 2: Create a Retention Report To create a retention report in Tableau Desktop, you will need to create a line chart with the x-axis representing time and the y-axis representing the percentage of customers who have remained active. To do this, you can use the “Retention” calculation in Tableau, which compares the number of customers who have remained active to the total number of customers who were active at the beginning of the period.

Step 3: Create a Cohort Analysis Cohort analysis allows you to group customers based on when they first became a customer and track their behavior over time. To create a cohort analysis in Tableau Desktop, you will need to create a heatmap with the x-axis representing time and the y-axis representing the cohort. You can use the “Cohort” calculation in Tableau to group customers based on when they first became a customer.

Step 4: Analyze and Interpret the Results Once you have created your retention report and cohort analysis, you can use the insights to improve your business. For example, if you notice that certain cohorts have a higher retention rate than others, you can try to understand why and replicate the success with new customers. Similarly, if you notice that certain time periods have a lower retention rate, you can try to identify and address the cause.

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In conclusion, Tableau Desktop is a powerful tool for conducting customer retention and cohort analysis. By following these steps and using the built-in calculations in Tableau, you can easily understand and improve the performance of your products or services.

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