B2B SaaS

«We cut the price — and people still left»

The analytics service was sure it was about price. Twenty interviews showed otherwise: customers left without ever seeing the main thing they'd signed up for.

← All cases

1Company & symptom

Company
An analytics service for online stores. €90/month subscription, about 1,200 active customers, self-service and demo-based sales.
Symptom
6% of customers left every month. When cancelling, people most often picked "too expensive" — 58%. Prices were cut twice, discounts handed out. Churn didn't budge, and revenue fell.
False hypothesis
"We're too expensive." That's how it looked from a survey with ready-made answer options.

2Research design

Goal
Understand at what moment, and why, people actually decide to leave.
Who we invited
20 customers who cancelled their subscription in the last two months.
Format
A 12–15 minute voice interview, link sent by email after cancellation.

3Script

Full set of questions

  1. Recall the moment you decided to cancel the subscription. What was happening then?
  2. What task did you sign up for the service to solve in the first place?
  3. What were you trying to do in it in the last weeks before cancelling?
  4. When did it last actually help you? Tell me about that case.
  5. What was the most inconvenient or annoying thing about using it?
  6. If it cost half as much, would you have stayed? Why?
  7. What did you compare it to — on price and on value?
  8. What would have had to happen for you not to leave?
  9. What do you use instead of it now, and why?

AI doesn't read this out as a list. It follows the questions and, after every answer, asks a live follow-up until it gets to the real point. Here's how it sounds.

4Live conversation

Interview excerpt

AI
When cancelling, you marked "too expensive". Expensive compared to what?
Respondent
Honestly, I never figured out how to set up the reports for my store.
AI
And what did you want to get out of those reports?
Respondent
I wanted to see which products were just burning ad budget. Fiddled with it for a week and gave up.
AI
And when you gave up — what did you think of the service?
Respondent
That for €90 a month it should work right away, not after a week of struggling.
AI
So the amount itself wasn't the main thing?
Respondent
If I'd seen that report in the first week, I'd have paid twice as much. I just never got to it.

5Interview analysis

sonarum combines 20 conversations into one report: which themes come up most often, live quotes, and conclusions.

How often the theme came up

Never opened the main report70%
"Too expensive" meant "didn't see the value", not "can't afford it"65%
Got stuck in setup for the first seven days60%
Expected instant value — got a hard start55%
Switched to a simpler tool40%
«If I'd seen this report in the first week, I'd have paid twice as much.»
«I'm not against the price. I'm against having to struggle for a week to get it.»
«I switched to a simpler thing — it does less, but I understood it all in one evening.»

Key conclusions

  • "Too expensive" in the survey covered up the real reason — the person simply never saw the value. Price was an excuse, not the problem.
  • Customers left in the first week, never reaching the report they'd signed up for.
  • Cutting the price made no sense — it didn't bring the person any closer to the value.

6Solution & result

Leave the price alone. Rebuild onboarding: a "your first report in 10 minutes" wizard, plus a day-three email if the person still hasn't opened the main report.

Before → after

Monthly churn
6%
3.4%
Reached the main report
41%
68%
Average order value
€78 (with discounts)
€90

In three months, churn fell by almost half, and the share of people who reached the value grew by 50%. Discounts were cancelled — the order value returned to full price. One study paid for a year of sonarum with room to spare.

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