Why new users didn't come back.

Café, a Y Combinator-backed B2B SaaS for hybrid work, had 20,000 users and was signing up around 300 new ones a week. More than half did not come back after their first week: most of each week of acquisition was lost. As the first researcher hired, I started with no process, no repository and no structured access to users.

My role

Lead User Researcher, first hire

With

Founders and product team

Set up

Recruitment, protocols, continuous feedback, repository

1. 1:1 interviewsQual

   HR, office managers and employees: actual hybrid habits versus perceived ones.

2. Usability testsTestapic

   Moderated and unmoderated tests, written protocols, video and verbatim analysis.

3. Continuous feedbackQuant

   An ongoing questionnaire and analytics to size the hypotheses from the qual work.

4. RepositoryResearch ops

   Insights captured in one place, open to the whole product team.

Why this approach

1. Build access to users first

   With no panel and no process, step one was being able to talk regularly to HR, office managers and employees.

2. Alternate qual and continuous feedback

   Interviews and tests (Testapic) surface hypotheses; a continuous survey, shown after one week of use, quantifies them over time and supplies targeted contacts for interviews.

3. Capture it all in a repository

   Dovetail, open to the whole product team: every new question starts from what we already know.

1. Why don't new users come back after their first week?
2. How do teams really decide to come into the office?
3. Do managers and employees expect the same thing from the tool?

1. 01
   The problem isn't attendance, it's invisible coordination

   Teams don't know why they should come in: when their colleagues will be there, which meetings really need to be in person. The information is scattered across calendars, Slack and gut feeling.

   • I come in on Tuesdays because I assume my team is there. But I don't really know.
2. #1
   Seeing colleagues is the first reason to come in, and the least supported

   The reason mentioned first is not productivity but social connection. Yet nothing makes a shared coffee break or an impromptu lunch any easier.

   • We bumped into each other at the coffee machine. That's where the real conversations happen.

   

3. 2
   Managers and employees follow two opposite logics

   Managers want an overall view to organise team moments. Employees want flexibility and to know whether their teammate will be there. One tool, two needs to reconcile.

1. P1Make visible who is coming, when and why

   Give people a reason to come in from day one, rather than just a schedule.

2. P1Support the social moments

   Connections, events and informal meetups at the heart of the product.

3. P2Two views for two logics

   An overview for managers, reciprocity and flexibility for employees.

Every method has blind spots. Here are this study's, and how I accounted for them.

• The churn drop follows a full redesign.

  It is the result of the whole product team. Research set the direction: a reason to come in before a schedule.

• Two user types with opposite expectations.

  Managers and employees were interviewed separately, so as not to merge two needs into one.