45 projects were chosen for the analysis by these criteria:
- active in a chat with the Superdao team
- attended calls with DAO Success / DAO Design
- started using the product / have a DAO Workspace on the platform
Statistics
- 40% left on the initial stage – only chat/calls, nothing has been done on the Platform
- 40% left on DAO Creation stage – DAO Workspace is set up and designed by customer, but no airdrop done
- only 10% leave after Airdrop is done (not public)
- about left 20% due to lack of product features – a certain feature(s) were needed to proceed
- 17% did not get the utility of building a DAO
We defined 3 main reasons for churn:
- Poor communication
- Product flows (bugs and lack of features)
- Not our fit (wrong audience)
1. Communication
Reasons:
➖ Failed to convey product value, what it should be used for, use cases
➖ Poor customer onboarding
➖ Chat communication instead of a call
➖ Poor customer needs understanding
➖ Non-compliance with SLA and ping system
➖ Did not provide access to DAO Workspace straight away (long DAO setup form)
➖ Failed to give customer proper next steps
➖ Too many educational events
➖ No recurrent communication and checkups
➖ No follow-ups after the calls
➖ Lack of written docs
Improvements:
➕ More personalized communication via recurrent calls, explanation of next steps, setting agenda for the week, clear follow-ups
➕ Deep CustDev to understand customer needs and suggest proper use cases
➕ Granting access to the platform ASAP
➕ Strong onboarding with focusing on the features that customers will need most
➕ Commitment to follow SLAs and answer customers on time
➕ Request clear targets and success metrics
➕ Request a clear timeline
2. Product
Reasons:
➖ Not a fit in terms of chain (Solana, Etherium)
➖ Not a fit in terms of membership base (token needed)
➖ Too many feature requests from unpromising projects (customer level is low and development cost high)
➖ Multiple bugs and slow work of the platform
➖ No clear product roadmap (could not give customers estimates when a certain feature will be released)
➖ Unclear interface (not user-friendly writing and wording)
➖ Limited amount of actions that customer is able to do by himself without support
➖ No walletless experience available (blocker for web2 projects)
Improvements:
➕ Give a proper explanation to customers on the benefits of the Polygon chain as well as NFT based-membership approach
➕ Now that the product roadmap is out – give customers an estimated time for new features and inform them in advance if it will take longer
➕ Improve the screening process in order to skip unfitting requests
➕ Explain to customers that releasing new features is a long and costly procedure, so it will take time
➕ Enhance user experience via user research and feedback
3. Wrong Audience
Main reasons for churn:
➖ Lack of time and human resources
➖ Focus on another project
➖ Low/no budgeting
➖ No understanding of targets
➖ No time limits and timelines
➖ Prejudice (Russian team, web3 scams, crypto winter)
➖ No clear idea, hype motivation
➖ Do not need a DAO
➖ Slow development
➖ Misunderstanding of DAO purposes
Improvements:
➕ Tougher selection of leads in order to cut off weak projects at the beginning
➕ Deeper CustDev in initial stages to find out if a project is a fit
➕ Requesting definite targets in terms of revenue and users, success metrics
➕ Request a strict timeline or set one yourself
➕ Work deeper with prejudice (identify an early stage and explain why our product is worth a shot)
Regrettable vs Unregrettable Churn
Most customers from our pipeline can be defined as unregrettable as they don’t match our target customer profile.
Regrettable Churn – customer fits our target profile, voluntary uses the product, there is an appropriate use case, product features fulfill customers’ needs
Unregrettable Churn – product not optimized for these projects, a customer does not fit in audience, no proper use case
To Regrettable Churn we can refer these projects as regrettable churn:
- Happy Peach Club – influencer changed direction & prejudice about crypto market conditions
- Muse – applied for bootcamp but did not join the chat
- Foodriders – focused on fundraising, not enough time for DAO initiative
- Candy – applied for bootcamp but did not join the chat
- Sneaker Friend – requested a feature that could not be released on time
- Capsula – had to focus on other projects due to business issues
Insights
The core reason for high churn rates can be described as follows:
- Wrong target audience (in terms of product request, business goals, and available resources) to which we failed to provide the utility of using a product (proper use cases).
Most common mistakes have already been corrected:
- We switched to a more personalized approach through calls, moved away from group sessions and multiple asynchronous communication in chats
- Defined our target audience as mid-size businesses which have defined business goals, and possess available resources in terms of community, money, and human
- Started stricter selection of projects on the basis of the target audience
- Created in-depth Use Cases Playbooks for each vertical so that we can explain the utility of the product on a higher level