A proposal software company kept losing customers. Revenue was falling, and the founder was under pressure.
They needed to understand why people were leaving. So the team collected more cancellation feedback. Most departing customers said the product was too cumbersome to use.
That gave them a direction. They cut steps in the parts customers complained about and made proposals faster to create. After one round of changes, churn fell by 30%.
That's a good result. But it's pain relief, not growth. Fewer customers leaving doesn't mean the product has found a new direction for growth.
Making a product easier to use relieves the pain. Helping customers get the result they paid for is where growth begins.
When a customer says the product is cumbersome, we immediately want to cut steps and redesign the interface. But customers usually aren't buying fewer clicks. They're buying the ability to get something done. If they still can't do it, they can leave even when the product is easier to use.
Ruben, the founder of Bidsketch, once shared the story of a customer. I'll call him Alex here.
When Alex canceled Bidsketch, he only said he wasn't using it anymore. In the follow-up interview, he explained that he didn't create many proposals and couldn't get the design to match his brand.
At first, it sounded like he barely needed the product and found it awkward to use.
But the full story pointed somewhere else.
After seeing a beautiful proposal from another designer, Alex decided to update his brand. He wanted his proposals to carry the same design, so he tried to make it work in Bidsketch and ran into trouble. He switched to another tool and still could not get it right. For two months, he paid for both subscriptions. In the end, he used Word and spent a lot of time doing the design. He only canceled the Bidsketch subscription when he reviewed his quarterly expenses.
If he only wanted fewer steps, why spend so much time in Word?
He wanted a proposal that reflected his brand. The story suggests he wasn't unwilling to work. He was unwilling to keep paying without getting the result.
The difficulty he ran into was worth fixing. But simply helping him click fewer times and finish faster might not have addressed what he needed the design to do.
Ruben thought that showing existing custom templates during onboarding might have helped Alex implement the design. That's an improvement worth making: it helps a customer get the result they want.
But if a simpler process only gets him to a proposal he still dislikes, why would he renew?
A customer may truly be struggling to use the product. But when deciding what to change next, look beyond the clicks saved. Is the result they paid for actually within reach?
Ruben later wrote in a comment that products in this space only partly met expectations, and sometimes weren't serving the right customers. He said fundamental changes to the product and its positioning were needed.
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