INPUT REASONS: "Too expensive" (x4), "we built something internally" (x2), "not using it enough" (x5), "switching to Notion", "my colleague who set this up left", "missing the reporting we needed" (x2) PRODUCT: Project management tool for marketing agencies, 79 EUR/month per team, paid by agency owners TENURE: 15 cancellations in the last quarter; 9 of them within the first 3 months, 4 after a year, 2 after two years TRIED: We added an onboarding checklist and send a tips email in week 2 OUTPUT (Claude Sonnet, unedited) ## What actually happened The dominant pattern is early failure to embed: 9 of 15 cancellations happened within 3 months, and the top reasons ("not using it enough," x5; "too expensive," x4) both suggest teams that never built a daily workflow around the tool before judging it not worth the price. The biggest driver is failed activation, not price. ## Reasons, grouped | Group | How many | Stated reason | Likely underlying cause | Preventable? | |---|---|---|---|---| | Low activation | 5 | "not using it enough" | Team never built a habit around the tool; onboarding didn't get them to a repeatable daily action (inferred) | Yes | | Price/value mismatch | 4 | "too expensive" | Low usage made the EUR 79/team cost feel unjustified — likely overlaps with the low-activation group (inferred) | Partly | | Feature gap | 2 | "missing the reporting we needed" | Client-reporting is core to agency work; the tool didn't cover a need central to how agencies justify their own value to clients (inferred) | Yes | | Replaced by internal build | 2 | "we built something internally" | Preferred control/customization over a vendor tool (inferred) | Partly | | Competitor switch | 1 | "switching to Notion" | Possibly the same underuse/value issue expressed as "we found something else" (inferred) | Partly | | Champion departure | 1 | "colleague who set this up left" | No one else on the team was onboarded onto the tool (inferred) | Partly | I cannot map specific customers to the "9 within 3 months / 4 after a year / 2 after two years" tenure split — no reason-by-tenure crosswalk was given, so the timing pattern above is directional, not per-customer. ## The one to fix first Low activation (5 customers, likely overlapping with several "too expensive" cases). The current fix — an onboarding checklist and a week-2 tips email — is passive and didn't stop 9 first-quarter cancellations. Replace it with an active trigger: require one real client project with a task assigned within 5 days; if that hasn't happened, route the account to a human check-in by day 7, not another email. Goes in onboarding / early customer success. Build time: ~2–3 weeks. ## Where they were lost Onboarding. Nine of fifteen cancellations happened within 3 months — a team not using the product by month 2–3 has almost certainly already checked out before typing "too expensive" or "not using it enough" into the cancellation box. ## The signal you could have seen - No project or task created within 5 days of signup — trigger a check-in call. - Fewer than 2 logins per week by day 14 — trigger an in-app or email nudge. - Reporting/dashboard feature never opened by day 30 — flag as a value-gap risk given how often reporting comes up as a reason. ## What to say to the next one "Hi [name] — I noticed your team hasn't set up a project yet. That's usually the moment [product] starts saving time, so I don't want you to miss it. Want 15 minutes this week and I'll set up your first project live with you, using one of your real client accounts? No pressure either way — just want to make sure you get a fair shot at seeing if this fits before you decide." ## Not worth fixing The 2 customers who built something internally. That's a deliberate build-vs-buy choice a pricing or feature tweak won't reverse — winning them back means competing with a tool they already built and staffed, which costs more than 2 accounts at EUR 79/month return. ## What to ask in the next cancellation form 1. In the last month, was [product] part of your team's actual daily workflow, or mostly unused? 2. Was there a specific report or view you needed that you couldn't get? 3. If your team built or switched to something else, what does it do that we didn't? 4. Is the person who originally set up [product] still on your team?