Researching Drivers of User Churn

How might we learn why members are deactivating their accounts?

Facing a high volume of member deactivations, Axial lacked crucial data on churn reasons and motivations. Through interviews and surveys I discovered that deactivation often wasn't a sign of dissatisfaction, but rather a natural dormancy period when firms were not focused on sourcing deals. This insight shifted our approach from aggressive reactivation to nurturing dormant members, leading to more effective engagement and a deeper understanding of member motivations. The project highlighted the importance of digging deeper into member behavior to avoid assumptions and build stronger customer relationships.

AXIAL, 2020
Director, Head of Customer Experience

ROLES
Strategy Leader, Project Owner, Researcher, UX Designer

Overview

Background

Axial members were churning by deactivating what Axial calls "Buyside Projects"–similar to a saved search, this is the method by which buyers source deals. The company had little-to-no data on drivers of churn and needed to know more.

Design Process

Research

Email outreach to all recently deactivated members (~35)
User interviews with deactivated members (~10)
Interviews with three customer success team members

Prototype and Iterations

Designed a prototype of the survey (pictured) to share with members during the phone interview and collect feedback
Launched the email survey and created automation rules to send to any newly deactivated members
Adjusted the default selections based on feedback and “Other” responses

Delivery

I launched the automated survey and created insights and outreach dashboards for tracking and customer follow-up. The value of the data collected in the email survey created the case to dedicate product resources for building an in-app version (below).

From the data collected, we realized that the majority of deactivating members were no longer actively looking at deals through any channels at the time of deactivation. This meant that rather than being a red flag, deactivation was an indication that they had been dormant for some time. We then shifted our engagement approach to nurture these members with less-frequent touchpoints to stay top of mind for when they were back in deal-sourcing mode.

Challenges and Lessons Learned

As it turns out, people who have just churned were generally not eager to hop on a call! After getting a lukewarm response to my initial, outreach I changed my copy to make sure it was exceedingly clear that I was not trying to win them back as customers and offered a $25 donation to the charity of their choice to sweeten the deal. I was able to connect with more members after my second round of outreach.

Sometimes, an observed user behavior will be caused by motivations that are completely different than what our first instincts suggest. This process made me curious about running this kind of ongoing research to find the root of behaviors. Had we acted on our original instincts, which were to increase outreach to newly deactivated members to get feedback and try to reactivate them, we likely would have alienated the majority who were simply taking a break.