Customer research call guide

Strategic Recruitment Plan

The cancellation form pre-selects "Too expensive", severely skewing quantitative data toward price. Furthermore, while 81% of retained users cook ≥3 recipes/week in month 1, only 34% of churned users do—suggesting retention is fundamentally won or lost on habit formation, pace, and food waste guilt (evident in recurring free-text notes like "kept piling up").

To evaluate exec hypotheses (Price, Recipe Repetition, Delivery) against these underlying behavioral dynamics, we will recruit six subscribers across distinct behavioral archetypes:

Backup recruits: S-8044 (Repetitive), S-8115 (Delivery), S-8038 (Price/High engagement).

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Interviewer Guide (30 Minutes)

> Interviewer Note (for new PMs): > 1. Never mention their cancel form response. It was pre-selected and biases answers. > 2. Focus on stories, not opinions. Don't ask "Was it too expensive?" Ask "Walk me through the last box you unpacked." > 3. Embrace 3 seconds of silence. Let the participant fill pauses.

#### 1. Welcome & Rapport (3 mins) * "Thanks for taking the time! I’m [Name], a product manager at Sprig. We’re working to make our boxes better, and we learn the most from people who decided Sprig wasn't right for them." * "There are no right or wrong answers, and you won’t hurt my feelings. I’m recording this for notes—is that okay?"

#### 2. The Early Days & Habit Formation (7 mins) Goal: Understand the baseline expectation and initial activation (testing month-1 cooking habit). * "Think back to when you first signed up for Sprig. What was going on in your life that made you want meal kits?" * "Walk me through your first couple of weeks. How often were you cooking the meals?" * "Did you cook with someone else? How did the portion sizes fit your household?"

#### 3. The Turning Point & Kitchen Reality (12 mins) Goal: Neutral deep dive to evaluate price, delivery, repetition, and food waste without leading. * "Think about the last box you received before canceling. Walk me through what happened from the moment it arrived to when you decided to cancel." * If Ops signal: "Did it arrive when and how you expected? How did that affect your week?" * If Food signal: "How did picking your meals feel toward the end compared to the beginning? Did you feel excited by the menu?" * If Fridge/Time signal: "Did you ever have ingredients left over when the next box arrived? How did you handle that?" * "I noticed you skipped a few deliveries [or never skipped]. How did skipping fit into your routine?" * "Tell me about the specific moment you went to the website to hit 'Cancel'. What tipped you over the edge that day?"

#### 4. The Alternative & True Cost (5 mins) Goal: Test CEO hypothesis (competitors vs. grocery vs. takeout). * "Now that you aren't using Sprig, what are you doing for dinner on busy weeknights?" * "Did you try or consider any other meal kits or services? Why or why not?" * "When you think about the total cost of Sprig, what felt like the biggest driver of whether it was 'worth it'?"

#### 5. Wrap-Up (3 mins) * "If you had a magic wand and could change one thing about Sprig so that it fit your life perfectly, what would it be?" * "Thank you so much for your candor. We’ll send your $30 gift card within 24 hours."

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Post-Interview Debrief Checklist (Immediately after call)

Capture within 10 minutes in Slack/Notion: 1. Primary root cause: (e.g., Recipe boredom, Food waste guilt, Box delivery timing, Absolute price, Household mismatch). 2. True competitor: (e.g., Trader Joe’s, HelloFresh, Takeout, Cooking from pantry). 3. Exec hypothesis validation: Did this support CEO, Food, or Ops? (Yes/No/Partial + 1-sentence quote).

Aim and guardrails

Understand the sequence leading to cancellation, not ask subscribers to vote on executives’ theories. Test price, repetition, and delivery alongside an alternative: subscribers never established—or lost—a workable cooking routine, making unused food feel expensive.

The cancellation form is weak evidence: price is first and preselected, only one answer is allowed, and comments sometimes conflict with selections. The first-month cooking gap—81% of retained subscribers versus 34% of cancellers cooking at least three recipes weekly—is an important association, not proof of causation. Last-four-week cooking counts cannot identify first-month activation.

Recruit these six

Use purposive contrasts, not a representative sample. Counts below mean weeks subscribed / skips in last six weeks / recipes cooked in last four weeks.

Contact primaries immediately; approach backups if unavailable or declining. Offer the same fixed incentive regardless of feedback. Invite them to discuss “your experience using and stopping Sprig,” without naming hypotheses. Confirm they managed the subscription or cooking; do not screen for agreement with a theory.

Before calls, verify metric definitions, subscription dates, and available delivery history. Skipping reduces opportunities to cook; raw cooking counts are not cooking rates. Schedule three calls Tuesday, three Thursday, with debrief time.

Shared 30-minute interview guide

0–2 minutes: introduction

“We’re learning how Sprig fitted into your life and what led you to stop. This isn’t a sales call; honest criticism is useful. You can skip questions or stop. May we record for research notes?”

2–6: expectations and early use

• “What was happening in your life when you signed up?”
• “What did you hope Sprig would replace or make easier?”
• “Walk me through an early delivery: who cooked, what got cooked, and what happened to the rest?”
• “How typical was that during your first month?”

6–15: reconstruct the change

• “Walk me through your last few weeks with Sprig.”
• “Tell me about the last box you received—from arrival to what happened to each meal.”
• “When did you first consider stopping? What happened just before that?”
• “Was there a time it worked better? What changed?”
• “Tell me about a week you skipped, if any. What drove that decision?”

Anchor memories to deliveries or calendar events; accept “I don’t remember.”

15–20: cancellation and alternatives

• “Tell me about the day you cancelled. Why then?”
• “What had you already tried?”
• “What options did you consider, including skipping?”
• “What have you actually done for meals since?”

20–27: test explanations, only after the unaided story

Ask everyone: - “How did the cost fit your budget and what you got from it?” Probe actual alternatives, prices or discounts used—not hypothetical willingness to pay. - “How did recipe choice change over time?” Request specific examples and timing. - “How did deliveries fit your plans?” If problems arose: promised versus actual arrival, consequences, frequency, and attempted resolution. - Then show their selected reason/comment: “How well does this capture what happened? What’s missing?”

27–30: confirm

Summarize the sequence, separating ongoing frustrations from the final trigger. “What have I misunderstood? What else mattered?”

Support and synthesis

Pair each novice with an experienced observer; rehearse Monday. Use silence and “Tell me about a specific time,” not suggested answers. Never defend Sprig or pitch fixes.

After each call, record timeline, supporting examples, contradictions, and unknowns separately from interpretation. Friday, compare cases across all explanations, explicitly noting disconfirming evidence. Report mechanisms and next validation steps—not churn percentages or causal conclusions from six interviews.

Churn Interviews: Recruit Plan and Guide

What the data already tells us

• The cancel form inflates "Too expensive." It is pre-selected, so we can't tell real price objections from people clicking through. Most cancellers left it on that answer.
• Most cancellers had stopped cooking before they left. Many cooked 0–2 recipes in their last four weeks and skipped several deliveries. Their free text points to fit, not price: "kept piling up in the fridge," "too much food for two," "didn't have time to cook." The comparison stat agrees: 81% of retained subscribers cooked 3+ recipes a week in month one, versus 34% of cancellers. That's a correlation, but it suggests a fourth hypothesis none of the execs named: the kit never became a habit.
• "Delivery problems" cancellers look different. Every one of them cooked 3+ recipes in their last four weeks, and several left within weeks 2–3. These are engaged customers we lost to an ops failure.
• Free text often contradicts the selected reason. For example, "Moving / travelling" sits next to "cheaper at the supermarket."

Six calls can't tell us how many people leave for each reason; the data does that. The calls are for understanding how people decide to leave, so we give each hypothesis a fair, clean case.

Who to recruit

Contact backups only if the primary doesn't respond within 48 hours. Assign the experienced interviewers to calls 1 and 2, where people most easily give a stock answer like "it was the price." New interviewers take 3–6 and shadow one call first if the schedule allows.

Interview guide (30 min)

Rules for interviewers (read before every call)

1. Ask about what happened, not opinions. Prefer "Tell me about the last box you got" to "Do you think the recipes are repetitive?"
2. Don't mention their cancel reason or our hypotheses until section 4. If you say "price" first, you'll hear "price."
3. Don't defend, explain, or offer anything. No discounts, no "actually you can skip weeks." If they ask, note it and say someone can follow up.
4. Allow silence. Count to five before your next question. The best answers come after the pause.
5. Use neutral probes: "Tell me more." "What happened next?" "Can you give me an example?" "Why was that?"
6. Follow their story, not the script. The script makes sure you cover everything; you don't need to ask it in order.
7. Write down exact quotes, especially words they use about money, time, food, and delivery.

1. Intro (2 min)

"Thanks for making time. I'm [name] from Sprig. We're trying to understand what Sprig was like to use, including the bad parts. There are no wrong answers, and I'm not here to win you back. Is it OK if I take notes or record?"

2. Their life with Sprig (8 min)

• "Take me back to when you signed up. What was going on? What were you hoping it would do for you?"
• "Walk me through a typical week with a box. When did it arrive? Who cooked? What happened to the food?"
• "How did that change over time?"
• Probe: "When did that start?" "What was different then?"

3. The decision to leave (10 min)

• "Tell me about the last few boxes before you cancelled."
• "When did you first think about stopping? What happened that day or week?"
• "Before cancelling, did you skip any weeks? What was going on then?"
• Probe for leftovers and waste: "What happened to meals you didn't cook?"
• "What did you do instead for meals? What does that cost and take?"
• "Was there one moment that tipped it, or did it build up?"

4. Checking the reasons (6 min)

Ask these only now. - "On the cancel form you chose [reason]. Is that how you'd describe it to a friend?" - If the reason was pre-selected, say: "That option was already ticked by default. Was it your actual reason?" - Ask about each of the following, one at a time, unless they've already covered it. Get a specific example for each. - "How did the price feel by the end? Compared to what?" - "How did you feel about the recipe choices?" - "Any issues with deliveries? What happened?" - "If you could change one thing, would you have stayed? What would it be?"

5. Wrap (4 min)

• "Is there anything I should have asked but didn't?"
• Thank them and explain any incentive.

After each call (15 min, same day)

Fill in the shared sheet with: - Their main reason, in their words. - When cooking dropped off: week, and the trigger. - Supporting quotes. - Whether the form reason matched their story.

After all six calls, I'll write up how each person's decision unfolded, mapped against the four hypotheses. I'll be clear that six interviews show how people decide, not how many decide each way. The write-up will also recommend changing the cancel form so no option is pre-selected; that one change will make the form data usable.