Role: Lead Researcher | Study Type: Foundational (mixed methods) |Timeline: 4 weeks | Stakeholders: CRO, Director of Marketing, Head of Customer Success

A Tale of Lost Leads

The goal of this study was to understand why those who place orders to receive fiber internet with Ting, don't actually end up converting as customers.

Overview

Install appointment

Ting customer!

2nd CS touchpoint

1st CS touchpoint

Order placed

User discovers Ting

Though we didn't know why these potential customers were churning, we did have a very rough idea of where the process was breaking down. Our typical customer journey is what we see below: someone is looking for a new Internet Service Provider     they find Ting and submit an order online     they get a call from a member of our customer support team     an install appointment gets scheduled     our customer support team follows up with the customer again     the customer now has Ting internet up and running in their home.

However, after the order is submitted, we lost contact with the customer and we didn't know why. At various points throughout the customer journey a member of our CS team makes multiple points of contact with customers via phone call and email, but after so many outreach attempts and hearing nothing back, that lead eventually gets marked as lost.

Context

30% of orders never activate, leading to hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost revenue each year. This issue was not only a critical research focus but also a key priority for the company, as increasing customer activations and reducing lost leads were central to its OKRs. My stakeholders approached the problem from different angles but shared the same goal: understanding why customers were not activating. My role was to uncover insights that addressed their concerns while also providing actionable recommendations to drive activations, reduce lost leads, and ultimately increase revenue.

Business Implications

Q2. At what point in the customer journey is this happening?

Q1. Why do non-activating customers ignore support outreach after placing an order?

Research Goals

Research Questions

2.

Identify where in the customer journey it’s happening.

Q3. How do non-activating customers feel about their onboarding experience?

1.

Understand why customers are dropping off.

Phase 1: Lightweight survey

• I wanted to get a sense of what was going on with these lost leads that customer support couldn’t reach.

  • Select all that apply

  • Open text response

  • Multiple choice

  • 7 questions total

Phase 2: In-depth Interviews

• Meant to build upon the survey data to help uncover why survey respondents answered the way they did and provider richer & more detailed insights

This mixed-methods approach was split into 2 phases:

From kickoff        to readout.

Timeline

4

weeks

Goal: Why these factors mattered.

Goal: What factors drove churn.

8

in-depth interviews

77 respondents

Interviews

Survey

Mixed Methods

Approach

Price

Our $200 custom install fee came as a surprise, many not discovering it until the day of their internet install appointment when a technician told them they required a custom vs. a standard (free) install.

Damages

Getting fiber internet with Ting sometimes meant that trenches had to be dug in order to get fiber from the street to the home. In some cases, this meant customers would incur damages to their landscaping, front yard, gardens, and even the exterior/interior of one's home.

Insights

Our install process was blocking conversions

Recommendations

3. Expand lost lead data set and operationalize surveys.

2. A/B test a pilot program waiving the custom install fee and covering repair costs.

1. Make custom install pricing clearer and information about the install process easier to find on our site.

To address these issues around installation, I delivered 3 key recommendations.

Implementation of rolling research program measuring CX

The methodology and findings from this study had such wide reaching impact at Ting that it served as the catalyst for a rolling research program aimed at measuring the customer experience and reducing churn. The survey leveraged in this study served as the basis of the survey that was then implemented in our rolling research program. 

Recovery of lost revenue     20% increase in customer activations

Findings from this study bridged the gap we saw in our 30% churn rate and resulted in 20% year of year customer activation rates.

Company wide policy change completely eliminating the          custom install fee

The most significant impact my study had was that our CRO was so bought in to the research, he decided to implement a company wide policy change that completely removed the $200 custom install fee.

Impact