Customer research call guide

Sprig Retention: Churn Interview Plan (Next Week)

To stress-test our executive hypotheses (CEO: Price/Competitors; Head of Food: Repetitive recipes; Head of Ops: Late deliveries) and address the alarming baseline metric—only 34% of cancellers cooked $\ge$3 recipes/week in month one, versus 81% of retained users—we have selected a targeted cross-section of 6 users from last quarter’s cancellation dataset.

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Part 1: Recruitment Plan (Who & Why)

We need a mix of profiles to isolate the real drivers of churn while accommodating our two interviewers who are new to the process (we will pair them with experienced leads or give them highly structured transcripts).

1. S-8028 (Delivery Problems / High Engagement) * Profile: Subscribed 3 weeks, skipped 2, cooked 9 recipes (heavy initial usage). Reason: Delivery problems. Free text: "kept piling up in the fridge". * Why: Tests Head of Ops' delivery hypothesis against actual usage. With 9 recipes cooked, they were engaged until logistics broke down. Good for new interviewers (clear timeline). 2. S-8056 (Price / Power User / Churn after 29 weeks) * Profile: Subscribed 29 weeks, skipped 1, cooked 12 recipes in the last 4 weeks. Reason: Too expensive (default). Free text: "cheaper at the supermarket". * Why: Tests CEO's price hypothesis. Crucially, they were cooking 12 recipes a week right up until cancellation—meaning value was high, but price sensitivity or a competitor offer triggered the exit. 3. S-8035 (Recipes / Long-term Churn) * Profile: Subscribed 56 weeks, skipped 1, cooked 2 recipes. Reason: Recipes got repetitive. Free text: "didn't have time to cook". * Why: Directly tests Head of Food’s hypothesis on long-term fatigue. Shows how a loyal user of over a year slowly disengaged. 4. S-8005 (Price / Early Drop-off / Zero Engagement) * Profile: Subscribed 20 weeks, skipped 5, cooked 0 recipes. Reason: Too expensive. Free text: "too much food for two". * Why: Represents the bulk of cancellers who fail activation (0 recipes cooked). Unpacks whether "Too expensive" is a proxy for value failure (didn't use it, so it felt like a waste). 5. S-8115 (Delivery / Mid-term / High Usage) * Profile: Subscribed 17 weeks, skipped 2, cooked 10 recipes. Reason: Delivery problems. Free text: "cheaper at the supermarket". * Why: Combines delivery issues with secondary price/supermarket comparison. Great for testing if operational friction causes users to re-evaluate overall cost. 6. S-8214 (Recipes / Mid-term / Moderate Usage) * Profile: Subscribed 31 weeks, skipped 3, cooked 3 recipes. Reason: Recipes got repetitive. Free text: "too much food for two". * Why: Explores the intersection of recipe fatigue and household sizing ("too much food for two"), providing actionable product feedback for the Head of Food.

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Part 2: 30-Minute Interview Guide

Designed for clarity, supporting our two new interviewers with clear guardrails against leading questions.

Phase 1: Introduction & Context (5 mins)

• Interviewer Script: "Hi [Name], thanks for taking 30 minutes. I’m with Sprig. We’re not here to win you back or sell you anything—I genuinely want to understand your experience so we can fix things for current subscribers. There are no right or wrong answers."
• Warm-up: "Take me back to when you first signed up. What were you hoping Sprig would solve for you?"

Phase 2: The Journey & Engagement (10 mins)

(Focusing on the gap between our 81% retained benchmark and their early experience) * "Looking back at your first month, how easy or hard was it to get through [X] recipes a week?" * Probe (for New Interviewers): Listen for signals matching the data (e.g., "I see you skipped a few weeks around month two..."). Ask: "What caused you to skip those weeks?" * "When you thought about skipping or pausing, what usually drove that decision? (e.g., schedule, food piling up, getting bored)?"

Phase 3: Stress-Testing Executive Hypotheses (10 mins)

• Testing Delivery (Ops): "Did delivery timing or box condition ever impact your cooking plans? Can you share a specific instance?"
• Testing Recipes & Portions (Food): "You mentioned [repetitive recipes / too much food for two]. At what point did the menu start feeling stale? Were there specific meals you started dreading?"
• Testing Price & Alternatives (CEO): "When you selected 'Too expensive' / noted supermarket prices, what were you comparing Sprig to? Did a competitor offer trigger the switch, or did the value equation shift over time?"

Phase 4: The Final Decision & Wrap-Up (5 mins)

• "Take me to the exact week you decided to cancel. What was the final straw?"
• "If you could wave a magic wand and change one thing about Sprig the day before you cancelled, what would it have been?"
• Close: "Thank you so much for your candor. This is immensely helpful for our team."

Churn interviews: recruiting plan and guide

What the data tells us

• The form can't be trusted. "Too expensive" is pre-selected and listed first, and roughly half of cancellers have it. Many of those cooked heavily or wrote free text about something else. Treat the selected reason as a lead, not an answer.
• Cancellers look like two groups, whatever they ticked.
• Fading: 3-5 skipped deliveries and 0-2 recipes cooked in 4 weeks. Their free text is mostly "piling up in the fridge", "too much food for two" and "no time", which is about quantity and routine. That fits none of the three exec theories directly.
• Still cooking: 0-1 skips and 6-12 recipes. Many of them ticked price, and almost all the delivery complainers sit here.
• Caveat: the retained-vs-churned stat (first-month cooking) isn't the same measure as the CSV (last 4 weeks), so I can't tell yet whether the fading group never built the habit or lost it. The calls should find out.

Six calls can't size anything. The aim is to find out what's really behind each pattern, so we can fix the form and then measure.

Who to recruit

Recruit a backup for each slot with a similar profile: S-8008, S-8090, S-8196, S-8153, S-8091 and S-8025. The Head of Ops' theory gets one slot because delivery complainers are few and look different from the rest.

Running the calls

• Pair each new interviewer with an experienced one. One leads and one takes notes, and they swap roles on the next call.
• New interviewers should lead calls 2 and 3, which are the least delicate.
• Spend 10 minutes after each call writing the cancellation story in three lines and noting which exec theory it supports, contradicts or ignores.

Interview guide (30 min)

Rules for new interviewers 1. Ask open questions and then stay quiet. Silence gets more than prompting. 2. Don't mention price, recipes or delivery first. Let them raise it. 3. Ask for specific events ("the last box"), not opinions ("what do you generally think?"). 4. Don't defend Sprig, don't pitch, and don't ask "would you come back if…?" People answer hypotheticals unreliably. 5. Follow up with "Tell me more", "What happened next?" and "Can you give me an example?"

1. Open (0-3 min) "Thanks for talking to us. We're trying to learn, not win you back, and nothing you say is wrong. Can we record for note-taking?"

2. Context (3-8 min) - "Who did you cook for? Tell me about a typical week of eating before Sprig." - "What made you sign up? What did you hope it would do for you?"

3. Timeline (8-20 min), the core of the call - "Take me through your first few weeks." (Probe: how many recipes did you cook, and what did it feel like?) - "Tell me about the last box you received. What happened to it, from the doorstep onwards?" - "When did you first think about cancelling? What was going on that week?" - "What did you do for meals instead?" - "Did you think about skipping a week instead? What happened with that?"

4. Only if not raised unprompted (20-26 min) - Cost: "How did the cost sit with you, and compared with what?" - Food: "How did you feel about the recipes over time? Any you made again or avoided?" - Delivery: "What was getting the box like?"

5. The form (26-29 min) Show what they selected. "You chose '[reason]'. What was going through your mind? Does it capture it?" For #2, #3 and #6, add: "Is there anything else that mattered more?"

6. Close (29-30 min) - "If you could change one thing about Sprig, what would it be?" - "Is there anything I should have asked and didn't?"

Tailored probes - #1: "Tell me about the week you had too much food. What did you do with it?" - #2: "Where did you do the comparison, and what exactly was cheaper?" - #3: "You were cooking a lot. What changed?" - #4: "Describe a week when you didn't feel like any of the recipes." - #5: "Walk me through your first delivery." - #6: "Could you have paused? Did you know that?"

After the calls

Review all six together and note which exec theories were supported, contradicted or absent. Separately, remove the default selection from the cancel form now, so the next batch of data is cleaner.

Churn interviews: recruiting plan and guide

What the data says (and doesn't)

Across 300 cancellations last quarter:

• The price number is inflated. "Too expensive" is pre-selected, so we can't tell deliberate choices from people who clicked Next. Treat it as a hypothesis to test, not a finding.
• Free text points away from all three exec theories. Where people wrote something, the recurring themes were over-supply ("too much food for two," "kept piling up in the fridge") and time ("didn't have time to cook"). Neither is in the exec hypotheses.
• Delivery cancellers were engaged. All 29 cooked at least 3 recipes in the last 4 weeks, and many cooked 8 or more. Late deliveries may be hurting people who want to cook.
• The retention benchmark isn't testable here. The 34% figure is first-month cooking. The export only has the last 4 weeks, so we can't compare the two. Early-tenure cancellers are the closest we can get, so we'll include one.

Who to recruit (6 calls)

Recruit from the list by reason, tenure, and cooking level so each call tests a different explanation. Keep 2 backups for each slot.

Backups: for slot 5, S-8153 (2 wks tenure, 8 recipes, delivery). For slot 6, S-8055 (Other, 5 skips, "too much food for two").

Interview guide (30 minutes)

Rules for all interviewers - Don't mention the cancel form's default or any exec theory. - Don't ask leading questions ("Was it the price?"). Ask what happened, then probe. - Let silences run. Don't fill them with suggestions. - Ask for specific examples: "Tell me about the last time…" - Don't defend Sprig or argue with the subscriber.

1. Opening (2 min) "Thanks for making time. We're trying to understand what happened with your subscription so we can improve it. There are no right or wrong answers, and nothing you say will affect your account. Is it okay if I take notes and record for accuracy?"

2. Their Sprig story (8 min) - "Take me back to when you first signed up. What did you hope Sprig would be for you?" - "How did a typical week go once the boxes started arriving?" - "What was happening in your life when you decided to cancel?" - "Walk me through the moment you decided. What happened first?"

3. The cancel form (4 min) - "On the cancel screen, you chose a reason. Can you walk me through how you picked it?" - If they say "too expensive": "What made that the best fit? Was there anything else you considered?" - If they chose something else: "What made that the closest match?" - "Was there a reason you wanted to share that the options didn't capture?"

4. Cooking and the box (6 min) - "In your first month, how many of the recipes did you actually cook?" - "What got in the way of cooking the others?" - "What happened to ingredients you didn't use? Walk me through a recent week." - "How did the portion sizes work for you?" - "How did the recipes feel after a few weeks?"

5. Price, delivery, and alternatives (5 min) - "How did the cost compare to what you'd spend otherwise?" - "You mentioned [free text, if any]. Tell me more about that." - "Have you had any issues with deliveries? What happened, and how did it affect your week?" - "Did you pause or skip boxes before cancelling? What was going on then?"

6. Counterfactual (3 min) - "If Sprig had changed one thing, would you have stayed? What would it have been?" - "What would have had to be different for you to skip only for a month instead of cancelling?"

7. Close (2 min) "Is there anything I didn't ask that you think we should know?" Thank them and confirm how the findings will be used.

Notes for the two new interviewers

• Pair each new interviewer with an experienced one for the first call, with the experienced person leading.
• Practise the "walk me through" and silence-holding moves beforehand. Most of the signal comes from follow-up probes.
• If a subscriber gets upset, acknowledge it briefly, offer to end early, and move to the close.
• Write down direct quotes, not summaries, especially about the cancel form and the portions.

After the calls

Code each interview against the three exec theories and two emerging themes (over-supply, time to cook). Report what each subscriber did and said, not just their stated reason. Flag any case where the stated reason and the story don't match, since that's the pre-selection problem showing up.