Example readout
What a finished churn study looks like
Synthetic participants, distil’s real output, unedited. The six people are invented and played by a model for a small invoicing app that does not exist. The findings below are what distil wrote after talking with them; none of the text was changed.
The question
“Why did you cancel in your first month?”
6 completed conversations.
What people said
People most often said the app created more work than it saved: three people described unreliable credit-union bank feeds that meant matching or reconciling payments by hand, and three described clients hitting a login wall when trying to pay. In both cases, the extra friction made the app harder to trust or use. The price story went both ways: one person said it was too expensive, while two said price wasn’t the issue and it cost less than the time they lost chasing payments. No one described a single dramatic tipping point; the cancellations followed repeated problems or a lack of value. This rests on six conversations, enough to spot these reasons but not to know how common they are overall.
Person 3 said that in April a client asked for bank details after hitting the login wall, which felt awkward. They also said the trial emails went quiet after day three, so they never learned about recurring invoices that might have helped with their work.
Person 5 said they invoiced only a few times a month and had hoped the tool would reduce the time spent chasing late payments. Like Person 3, they said they never learned about recurring invoices after the trial emails stopped after day three.
Person 6 said the bank feed was probably the deciding factor; they could live with clients asking for bank details, but not manually fixing transactions each time. Person 1 couldn’t recall a specific payment that tipped them over, only repeated mismatches that made the totals feel unreliable.
Two excerpts, with the follow-up
Price, then the bank feed: the follow-up asks for the moment it tipped
I’m curious what was behind your decision to cancel. What was going on for you in that first month?
It was too expensive for what it did. In that first month, the bank feed kept mismatching my credit union payments, so I was reconciling them by hand and stopped trusting the totals.
Was there a particular mismatch that made you decide it wasn’t worth continuing?
I can’t remember one specific payment that tipped me over. It was the repeated mismatches—having to check and reconcile them by hand—that made the totals feel unreliable.
A short answer, followed up
I’m curious what led up to your decision. What was going on when you decided to cancel?
I canceled after clients kept emailing for bank details instead of paying through the app.
What happened when clients asked you for your bank details?
They’d hit a login wall before they could pay, then email asking me for bank details.
Run your own
distil is free to create and answer. Write a question, send one share link to any number of people, and read the findings with quotes.