Customer research call guide

Research Guide: Root Cause Analysis for H2 Squad Allocation

Prepared by: Staff Product Manager Target Audience: Executive Team (CEO, CPO, VP CS, Head of Product) Timeline: 3 weeks of interviews; executive decision in Week 4 Scope: 12 calls (45 minutes each)

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1. Executive Summary & Recommended Changes to the Call Plan

Before executing this sprint, we must adjust three structural flaws in the proposed plan to protect data integrity:

1. Resolve the Account-to-Call Ratio: 12 calls cannot cover two separate stakeholders across 12 accounts. We will target 6 accounts total (3 churned, 3 at-risk) and conduct 2 distinct calls per account: one with the Warehouse Operations Manager (day-to-day user) and one with the VP of Operations/COO (economic buyer). Evaluating both perspectives within the same operational context is essential to determine whether operational failure or strategic misalignment triggered the exit.
2. Quarantine Active Renewals: 5 of the proposed 6 at-risk accounts are actively negotiating renewals and receiving discounts. Interviewing these buyers creates an immediate incentive for them to exaggerate product flaws to gain commercial leverage. We will swap 3 of these with at-risk accounts that are not currently negotiating pricing.
3. CEO Interview Protocol: Executive presence introduces severe confirmation and deference bias—especially with personal contacts who already know Ana's passion for robotics. Recommendation: Ana should join her 4 target calls as an executive sponsor for the first 3 minutes, then hand off lead facilitation to a Product Manager, remaining on mute as an observer. If Ana leads, she must strictly follow the non-leading script provided.

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2. Core Learning Goals

1. Pinpoint the Churn Decision Window: Did the customer mentally churn during the onboarding/implementation phase (Bet B), or did they leave after reaching steady-state due to technological ceilings (Bet A)?
2. Assess Real Robotics Demand vs. Narrative: Are customers actively deploying autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) and pick-assist hardware, or is "missing robotics" a convenient, forward-looking justification for leaving an underperforming platform?
3. Quantify the Cost of Onboarding Drag: Does exceeding the 45-day SLA directly burn operational credibility and destroy ROI, or is delay merely a symptom of customer-side disorganization?
4. Identify False Dichotomies (Bet Neither): Determine whether churn is driven by factors neither bet solves—such as baseline software unreliability, missing core 3PL billing/EDI features, or macro 3PL volume contraction.

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3. Interviewer Guidance & Rules of Engagement

• Recording Consent (Mandatory): State verbatim: "Before we begin, do you mind if I record this session purely for internal note-taking? None of this will be shared externally." If declined, proceed with manual notes.
• The "No Roadmap, No Pricing" Wall: Customers will attempt to trade feedback for commitments. If asked about features or discounting, respond: "I'm on the product research side and have no visibility into commercials or delivery timelines. My sole focus today is understanding how your operations actually run."
• Past Behavior Over Speculation: Never ask: "Would you use a robotics integration?" (Answer is always yes). Always ask: "What automation equipment do you have physically deployed on the floor today, and how does your team interact with it?"
• Root-Cause Probing (The "Five Whys"): When a customer says "missing integrations," do not accept the label. Ask: "What specific warehouse task were you trying to execute that stalled? What was the manual workaround?"

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4. Interview Scripts & Timings (45 Minutes Each)

Track 1: VP of Operations / COO (Economic Buyer)

#### Part 1: Context & Operational Profile (7 mins) * How has your facility footprint and throughput profile shifted over the last 18 months? * When you initially signed with Crate, what core business metric were you held accountable for improving?

#### Part 2: Implementation & Time-to-Value (12 mins) * Walk me back to your onboarding. What was the internal sentiment between signing the contract and processing your first live pallet? * Our contract targets a 45-day go-live; our median across customers is closer to 90. Where did the process stall, and what internal operational cost did that delay create? * At what point did your leadership team feel Crate was fully operational? Did you ever reach that state?

#### Part 3: Strategic Priorities, Automation, & Feature Gaps (16 mins) * Over the past year, what capital investments have you made on your warehouse floor (e.g., conveyor belts, automated guided vehicles, pick-assist carts, manual racking)? * If automation is present: Who manufactures it, what software controls it today, and what specific data must pass between it and your WMS? * If automation is absent: What is on your signed capital expenditure plan for the next 12 months? * When you evaluated the market (or competitors), what specific capability made it clear Crate was no longer the right long-term partner? * Think back to the moment you realized this contract wouldn't renew. When did that conversation happen, and who initiated it?

#### Part 4: Decision Trace & Wrap-up (10 mins) * If Crate had delivered on every promise made during the sales cycle within 45 days, would you still be with us today? Why or why not? * What is the single biggest operational bottleneck your business faces this quarter?

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Track 2: Warehouse Operations Manager (Daily User)

#### Part 1: Floor Reality & Daily Routine (8 mins) * Walk me through the first two hours of your shift on the floor. Where do supervisors and pickers spend the majority of their time inside Crate? * What daily tasks force your team to leave Crate and use spreadsheets, paper, or secondary systems?

#### Part 2: Go-Live Experience & Transition (12 mins) * How disruptive was the transition to Crate for your floor staff? How long did it take for pick/pack rates to recover to baseline? * During the first three months, how often did you have to escalate systemic issues to leadership? What were those issues? * Did you feel the system was configured correctly for your physical warehouse layout, or did you have to mold your workflows to fit the software?

#### Part 3: Floor Automation & Daily Bottlenecks (15 mins) * How do orders physically move through your facility today? * If pickers are assisted by any mechanical or automated equipment, where does software failure slow them down? * Have you piloted or evaluated autonomous carts or robotics on your floor? * If yes: What was the hardest operational part of that pilot? * If no: What prevents you from automating (e.g., client SKU variability, facility constraints, budget)? * If you could fix one workflow in Crate that causes your floor workers the most frustration, what would it be?

#### Part 4: The Tipping Point (10 mins) * When did your team start discussing alternative systems or workarounds? Was there a specific breaking point or system failure? * If you had a magic wand to improve your team’s pick/pack speed by 20%, what would you change about your physical setup or your software?

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5. Decision Rubric: What We Need to Hear

At the end of Week 3, interview findings will be mapped against this falsification framework:

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6. Next Steps

1. Day 1-2: Approve adjusted account roster (3 non-renewing at-risk, 3 churned). CS to send intro emails.
2. Day 3-17: Conduct 12 recorded interviews. Maintain a shared executive synthesis doc updated within 24 hours of each call.
3. Day 21: Final Decision Meeting. Present thematic evidence and allocation recommendation to Ana and Marcus.

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.