Ask HN: Best questions to ask users who leave

3 points by sydneyliu 9 years ago | 4 comments

For consumer products, what are the best questions to ask users who signed up and eventually didn't retain?

For most of them, I'm having troubles getting them on the phone (understandably), what are some short quick questions that are good to ask to learn from users who don't retain?

sydneyliu 9 years ago |

For example, pretend you run product at Twitter and you want to learn from the people in your target demographic who don't come back regularly to Twitter after signing up. What would you ask them to get good/useful product feedback?

vinchuco 9 years ago |

Perhaps it would help to know what the product is.

Otherwise the only generic questions I can think of are: What made you leave? What change in our product would have convinced you to stay?

This is outside my area of expertise.

sydneyliu 9 years ago | |

For this example, let's pretend the product is Twitter. Since I think everybody knows enough about to Twitter to think about the scenario.

I worry that questions like "What could we change" would miss the cases of "I was just busy" or not hit the heart of the issue. Seems like it'd be really good question for a B2B product

vinchuco 9 years ago | | |

I didn't realize you were the OP in the other comment. I would maybe leave twitter if there was a more attractive alternative and I didn't have an attachment to their brand or my content.

I'm not sure in the case of Twitter what could help. Other than the "sorry to see you go, we accept/appreciate your feedback in the textbox below".

It is a hard question of what makes an user leave. Why do we stop using tools, visiting places?

From HN I've read the recommendation to listen to active users (after all, you can get more data from them than one who left).