Retention · UK Post-Churn Interviews

What churned merchants actually told us, versus what our CRM logged.

Findings from the first pass of outbound post-churn interviews across the 110 non-fraud merchants assigned to Antonio, Luke and Vitaly.

110
merchants assigned for interview
25
interviews completed so far
26%
of CRM reasons matched the real reason
55%
of named competitor moves went to Dojo

01

Where the calling effort stands

Of the 110 merchants split across the three interviewers, a quarter have been reached and fully interviewed. The rest are mostly no-answers and callbacks still worth chasing — not dead ends.

02

CRM reason vs. Interview reason

The CRM side here is the merchant's official cancel_reason (column Y) categorised directly — not the separately-mined reason bucket a category already exists for. Both sides are then sorted into the same set of buckets, so the raw system reason and what the merchant actually said on the call can be compared directly, not just read as two blocks of free text.

Only 6 of 23 (26%) official cancel reasons matched what the merchant actually said. The rest either pointed to a different underlying driver, or — for placeholder labels like Not logged and Cancelled by Flatpay, which together account for 6 of the 23 — gave no real signal at all about why the merchant left.

How CRM categories map to what merchants actually said

Mint cells = the CRM category and the interview-confirmed reason are the same underlying issue. Everywhere else, the CRM label didn't predict the real reason.

View all 25 completed interviews — raw CRM reason and raw interview notes
MerchantCRM reason (raw)Interview reason (raw)

03

Why merchants say they really left

Merchants often cited more than one factor, so these add up to more than 100%. Based on the 23 completed interviews with a genuine competitive churn driver (excludes one store closure and one administrative case). MOTO, pay-by-link and other card-not-present gaps are grouped as CNP.

Memorable quotes on why merchants left

04

Where they went

Among the 20 interviews where the merchant named their new provider, Dojo accounts for more than half. Three merchants declined to say who they'd switched to.

05

What merchants say each competitor solved

Every reason a merchant gave for leaving, traced through to where they landed. Reasons aren't mutually exclusive, so this counts each of the 44 reason-mentions from the 23 substantive interviews separately — a merchant who cited both surcharge and payout appears in both flows.

Surcharge → Dojo: 4 merchants Surcharge → Other named competitor: 4 merchants Payout timing → Dojo: 4 merchants Payout timing → Other named competitor: 2 merchants Payout timing → Didn't disclose: 1 merchant Sales process / trust → Dojo: 4 merchants Sales process / trust → Other named competitor: 3 merchants Rate / price → Dojo: 4 merchants Rate / price → Other named competitor: 1 merchant CNP (MOTO/PBL) → Dojo: 2 merchants CNP (MOTO/PBL) → Other named competitor: 3 merchants Technical / hardware → Dojo: 1 merchant Technical / hardware → Other named competitor: 3 merchants Technical / hardware → Didn't disclose: 1 merchant Missing feature (other) → Dojo: 2 merchants Missing feature (other) → Other named competitor: 2 merchants Missing feature (other) → Didn't disclose: 1 merchant Contract terms → Dojo: 1 merchant Contract terms → Other named competitor: 1 merchant Surcharge 8 mentions Payout timing 7 mentions Sales process / trust 7 mentions Rate / price 5 mentions CNP (MOTO/PBL) 5 mentions Technical / hardware 5 mentions Missing feature (other) 5 mentions Contract terms 2 mentions 4 4 4 4 Dojo 22 of 44 reason-mentions (50%) Other named competitor 19 of 44 reason-mentions (43%) Didn't disclose 3 of 44 reason-mentions (7%)

Surcharge, payout timing, sales-process trust and rate/price each send exactly 4 mentions to Dojo (labelled above) — half of every reason-mention, regardless of category, ends up there. It isn't winning on one specific gap, it's simply the default landing spot across the board. Hover any other band for its count.

Dojo — reason breakdown (11 of 25 completed interviews)
Payout timing, surcharge, rate and sales-process trust each came up in 4 of the 11 Dojo moves (36%) — no single factor dominates. Merchants moving to Dojo consistently mention its daily/weekend payouts and a pricing model presented without a customer-facing surcharge as the headline differences.
Other competitors — reason breakdown

Counts are reason-mentions, not merchants — a merchant naming Teya after citing both surcharge and CNP appears in both columns. n = 19 mentions across the 9 merchants who named one of these 7 competitors.

Other named competitors — verbatim detail

06

Win-back potential, by reason for leaving

Each bar covers every merchant who mentioned that reason (n matches section 3), split into would return, wouldn't, or gave no clear answer. Reasons overlap — of the 23 substantive interviews cited more than one — and samples are small, so read these as directional.

Would consider returning (Yes / Maybe) No No clear answer
Product-fixable gaps — CNP support, surcharge, rate, hardware reliability — show the highest willingness to return once addressed. Payout timing and sales-process/trust issues sit at the bottom: merchants who felt misled at sign-up, or who need a payout-timing change we haven't committed to, are the hardest group to win back.
Quotes on openness to come back