Customer research call guide

Crate churn research: executive pre-read and interview guide

Decision: Allocate two squads next half to robotics integrations (A), implementation rebuild (B), or neither if the evidence does not justify either.

Research stance: Test both explanations, not confirm either executive’s account. These interviews can reveal mechanisms and decision timelines; they cannot estimate their prevalence across 340 customers or prove causality.

1. Learning goals

1. Reconstruct the departure process: When did concerns emerge, when did leaving become likely, and when was the decision effectively made?
2. Identify consequential problems: Separate reasons volunteered after leaving from problems that materially changed warehouse outcomes and the buying decision.
3. Test Bet A: Was a specific robotics incompatibility a binding obstacle? Would addressing it have plausibly retained the account?
4. Test Bet B: Did implementation delay prevent value, damage trust, or trigger departure? What caused the delay, and could Crate control it?
5. Find alternatives and interactions: Price, service, reliability, business changes, or other missing capabilities may dominate. Robotics work may itself complicate implementation.
6. Connect learning to an investable scope: What could two squads deliver next half that would address the demonstrated retention mechanism?

What the existing evidence does—and does not—say

• The exit survey’s broad integration category, single-choice format, first-position placement, and sparse free text do not establish robotics as the cause.
• The 2.4× churn association makes implementation worth investigating, but complexity, customer readiness, or other factors could drive both delay and churn.
• Three competitor moves and nine lost deals indicate a robotics opportunity; acquisition losses are not evidence of a retention mechanism.
• Unknown decision dates make chronology essential.

2. Changes to the call plan

Resolve the arithmetic: Twelve separate interviews cannot cover twelve accounts with two roles each. Use six accounts × two separate role interviews = twelve 45-minute calls.

Recommended mix: Four churned accounts and two at-risk accounts. This reduces reliance on renewal negotiations while retaining a prospective view. Findings will be depth-oriented, not representative.

Select accounts from the full CRM population, not executive contacts or survey answers alone:

• Across churned accounts, include slow and faster implementations, first-year and later departures, and robotics-exposed and non-exposed customers.
• Include at least one confirmed move to a robotics-enabled competitor and one slow implementation without an apparent robotics need.
• For at-risk accounts, prefer one with active automation plans and one with implementation/value-realization problems. Include the non-renewal account if suitable.
• Seek contrasting retained accounts through existing operational data, even though the call budget does not cover them.

Recruit both the daily warehouse operations manager and the contract-signing VP Operations/COO. If the original signer has left, recruit someone directly involved in the departure or renewal decision and document that substitution.

Ana should not lead calls with her personal contacts. Use a neutral interviewer without renewal responsibility. Ana can help recruit; observing requires explicit customer consent. Her existing conversations are useful leads, not independently verified findings.

CS should introduce research as separate from renewal discussions, then step out. Participation must not affect commercial treatment.

3. Interview guides: 45 minutes each

Use the relevant role column. In every section, distinguish direct experience from hearsay. Ask broad questions before naming either bet.

Status-specific wording

• Churned: Ask what the replacement actually delivered, whether it went live, and whether the cited problem improved—not merely what the competitor promised.
• At-risk: Ask what has already happened, current unresolved consequences, and what would cause escalation or departure. Do not imply a departure decision exists. Distinguish funded plans from aspirations.

4. Guidance for interviewers

• Begin with recording permission; record only after consent. Explain that this is research, not a support, roadmap, or renewal discussion.
• Do not discuss prices, discounts, or roadmap commitments. If raised, acknowledge without probing commercial terms: “I can’t discuss that here; your account team handles commercial conversations.” Record volunteered price concerns as an alternative explanation.
• Avoid “Did missing robotics make you leave?” and “Would faster onboarding have saved you?” Start with events; use counterfactuals only afterward.
• Ask for concrete examples, dates, artifacts, and consequences. “It was painful” is not yet a mechanism.
• Do not defend Crate, disclose executive hypotheses, or offer fixes.
• Interview roles separately before reconciling accounts. Treat disagreement as evidence, not an error to erase.
• Use a note-taker and common template: timeline, problem, consequence, decision link, alternative explanation, evidence source, and confidence. Count accounts, not two interviewees as independent votes.

5. Evidence required for the decision

Back A: robotics integrations

Look for a repeated chain across independent accounts:

Committed robotics deployment → specific missing connection → material operational/business constraint → documented role in departure or credible near-term risk.

Stronger evidence includes decision-maker confirmation, pre-decision correspondence, and a replacement that solved the problem. Match the implicated vendors/workflows to current customer exposure. Before funding, establish that a feasible integration scope could address meaningful retention risk next half.

Mentions of “automation,” hypothetical plans, or competitor marketing are insufficient.

Back B: implementation rebuild

Look for:

Crate-controllable implementation bottleneck → delayed usable value or broken operational commitments → loss of confidence/avoidable cost → departure decision before value realization.

Seek repeated bottlenecks, role-level corroboration, and contrasts with faster implementations. Validate the mechanism against the full cohort, accounting where possible for complexity and customer readiness. Identify changes two squads could deliver; do not assume a wholesale rebuild is necessary.

Back neither—or declare the result inconclusive

Neither is justified if dominant causes lie elsewhere, robotics demand is narrow or speculative, delays are largely outside Crate’s control, or either intervention arrives too late to affect retention. If interviews remain contradictory or unsupported, report insufficient evidence, not “neither causes churn.”

Compare both bets on reachable ARR at risk, evidence strength, controllability, delivery feasibility, and time to impact—not mention counts.

6. Three-week execution

• Week 1: Audit cohorts and timelines, recruit, pilot one role pair.
• Week 2: Complete remaining interviews; synthesize after each pair without changing standards to favor an emerging winner.
• Week 3: Verify discrepancies, triangulate with records, assess engineering scope, and prepare the decision memo with supporting evidence, counterexamples, uncertainties, and a recommendation.

Do not commit two squads merely because one story sounds more persuasive.

Crate churn research: decision guide

Decision: In four weeks, allocate two squads next half to robotics integrations (A), implementation redesign (B), or conclude that neither retention thesis is sufficiently supported.

Research window: Three weeks; twelve 45-minute interviews. These calls will test explanations and reconstruct decisions—not estimate how common each churn cause is across 340 customers.

1. Learning goals

1. Reconstruct the departure sequence: What happened between signing, implementation, first value, operational problems, searching for alternatives, and deciding to leave?
2. Identify the decisive mechanism: Was robotics incompatibility or implementation friction necessary to the departure, merely contributory, or a justification offered afterward?
3. Find actionable scope: Which integrations or implementation changes could plausibly have prevented the problem? Could two squads address them within a half?
4. Look for competing explanations and counterexamples: Other missing capabilities, service failures, customer-side constraints, or business changes may explain both delays and churn.
5. Separate operational pain from buying decisions: Did daily users and economic buyers experience the same problem and agree on why the relationship failed?

Starting evidence is suggestive, not conclusive. The survey’s broad, first-listed integration option does not establish robotics demand. The 2.4× churn association does not establish that delays caused churn. Competitor destinations do not establish purchase motives; nine lost prospects are acquisition evidence, not retention evidence.

2. Changes to the call plan

Resolve the interview arithmetic. Twelve accounts with two separate interviews each would require 24 calls. Within the limit, recruit six accounts, interviewing both roles separately: twelve calls total.

Use four churned accounts and two at-risk accounts. This prioritizes actual decisions and reduces exposure to active renewal negotiations while retaining prospective evidence.

Select accounts purposively from the eligible pool, not through executive relationships:

• Include late and on-time go-lives, plus a failed/never-live implementation if available.
• Include known robotics signals and accounts without them.
• Include first-year and longer-tenure departures.
• Seek counterexamples: late implementation without abandonment; robotics discussion without an actual deployment or switch.

Do not attempt a fully balanced matrix with six accounts. Document selection, refusals, substitutions, and gaps. Check whether the nine-month churn window excludes relevant cases from the annual churn rise; expand to twelve months if needed.

For at-risk accounts, prioritize the one outside renewal talks. CS must confirm that participation—or refusal—will not affect commercial treatment. If a renewal makes independent research impractical, substitute another eligible account.

Ana should not lead interviews with former customers she knows. Use a neutral researcher or PM who owns neither bet. Ana can help recruit through a standard invitation and review consented recordings afterward. Avoid executive attendance that could suppress criticism.

Before calls, prepare a factual account timeline from CRM, implementation logs, support records, and available usage data. Keep interpretations separate. Examine cohort definitions and potential confounders behind the 2.4× figure.

3. Interview guides

Both guides total 45 minutes. Ask open questions first; introduce the two hypotheses only after the participant’s unaided account.

Guide A: Warehouse operations manager

Guide B: VP Operations or COO

4. Interviewer operating rules

• Be curious, not persuasive. Do not quote Ana, Marcus, survey percentages, or the churn correlation.
• Probe concrete events: “When?” “Who?” “What happened next?” “How do you know?” Distinguish recollection, inference, and observed action.
• Do not discuss pricing, discounts, or roadmap commitments. If raised: “I can’t discuss commercial terms or future plans here; your account team can handle those separately.” Do not promise escalation outcomes.
• Interview roles separately; do not reveal the other person’s answers. Disagreement is evidence to investigate, not average away.
• Use a neutral note-taker. After each call, record chronology, spontaneous versus prompted reasons, supporting evidence, contradictions, and confidence.

5. Evidence required for the decision

Back A if multiple independent accounts—including actual departures—show committed robotics adoption, a specific blocking Crate incompatibility before the departure decision, failed workarounds, and credible evidence that resolving it would have preserved the relationship. Shared, feasible integration needs must emerge. Generic “missing features,” aspirational automation, or competitor capabilities alone do not qualify.

Back B if multiple accounts—including actual departures—show preventable implementation failures preceding loss of confidence, concrete operational consequences, and a credible path from faster successful activation to retention. Identify repeatable Crate-owned bottlenecks. Delays driven mainly by customer readiness, complexity, or already-failing relationships weaken this case.

Back neither if accounts remain contradictory, both theories depend on hypothetical claims, another mechanism dominates, or neither intervention fits the capacity and time available. If both qualify, compare affected retention exposure, intervention feasibility, and remaining uncertainty—not interview vote totals.

Run two pilot calls in week one, finish most interviews in week two, and reserve week three for remaining calls and synthesis. Produce one evidence sheet per account; paired interviews count as one account, not two confirmations. The final readout should combine those cases with cohort data, explicitly separate causality from correlation, and state what remains unproven before recommending either allocation.