NRR (Net Revenue Retention)
The share of recurring revenue kept from your existing customer base over a period — after expansion, contraction, and churn, with new customers excluded.
NRR % = (starting MRR + expansion − contraction − churn) / starting MRR x 100 (new customers excluded)NRR takes the recurring revenue you started a period with from a cohort of existing customers, adds what they expanded (upsells, extra seats, usage growth), subtracts what they downgraded or cancelled, and divides by the starting figure. New logos are deliberately left out — the point is to isolate whether your current base grows or shrinks on its own. Above 100% means expansion outran churn: the same customers are worth more than they were a year ago.
It shows up in support's orbit because the interactions that drive renewal and expansion — resolving problems cleanly, removing friction, catching at-risk accounts before they leave — happen in the queue. Support and success teams are increasingly measured against it, and it is a fair pressure to feel. But NRR is a whole-company number: product roadmap, pricing changes, and the sales motion move it at least as much as service quality does, so no single team fully owns it.
What it hides: NRR blends two opposite forces into one flattering figure, so a handful of big-account expansions can mask heavy churn in the long tail — you can lose a third of your logos and still post NRR above 100% if the survivors keep buying more. It is also gameable through packaging and list-price increases that inflate expansion without any real retention, and it tells you how much money left, never which customers walked or why. Read it next to gross retention, which strips expansion out and exposes the churn the net number papers over.