Did I just open my new podcast with a mistake?


I pick a fight with how we read customer feedback in the intro of my pilot Churn Flags episode:
​

"The SaaS playbook trained us to read feedback one way: as a feature request... But it misses what feedback is often really doing β€” waving a flag that something changed for your user."

And then, just a few minutes later, our guest, Paperform co-founder Diony McPherson tells me that the review that I handpicked to prove my point IS in fact a feature request.

Gulp.

Spoiler: we land on an even better story.

Hint: The thumbnail title kind of spells it out.

Get the full mistake, save story, and experiment set in our πŸ₯πŸ₯πŸ₯ first episode of Churn Flags.

Other ideas from the episode you don't want to miss:

00:00 β€” The launch you missed on vacation

04:24 β€” How Diony killed my first diagnosis in two minutes

09:23 β€” The aside that flipped the episode: a whole product this power user didn't notice

19:02 β€” The three experiments: rename, direct, or weekly case studies

21:12 β€” When renaming is a real lever, and when it torches years of recognition

27:37 β€” The payoff: perception is static, placement is the fix

29:07 β€” Bonus: 2 a.m. alarms and staying close as you scale

30:45 β€” The instinct that never expires (grab the rubric)

Churn Flags | Nikki * Elbaz

Sporadic observations. Misc. build-in-public experiences. Weekly podcast breakdowns turning 3-star reviews into growth experiments.

Read more from Churn Flags | Nikki * Elbaz

EP. 4 | CHANGE FLAG: PLATFORM / PERCEPTION Up for some SaaS Mad Libs? Fill in the blank: Bitly is a ____________ (noun) You're probably right. But also wrong. Because Bitly is tackling a __________ (proper noun) Change Flag. Ep. 4: The product adoption tax nobody warns category leaders about | ft. Tara Robertson, CMO at Bitly Ideas from this episode you don't want to miss: (03:49) How being famous for one thing introduces churn (in the shape of a customer asking for a product that's been in...

699 WORDS | READ TIME: 3 MIN | CHANGE FLAG: MASTERY Interruptions are only annoying if they're interruptions When you walk into a store and a saleslady sidles over and asks how she can help, what's your reaction? Well, it depends. If you're shopping for your niece's birthday and you have no idea what's trending in the world of teeny-bopper-dom, you thank Saleslady and let her show you the selection of custom phone lanyards. But if you know the exact shade of chartreuse that Niece wants, plus...

Churn Flags Ep. 3 thumbnail β€” "Help docs: where adoption goes to die", featuring Anand Vatsya of Storylane

EP. 3 | CHANGE FLAG: MASTERY You can be right and you can be dead Here lies the body of William Jay,Who died maintaining his right of way. He was in the right as he sped along,But he’s just as dead as if he’d been wrong. Shoutout to my hometown, this famous joke was first published as a poem in the Detroit Free Press. And it's what came to mind as I edited today's episode. Because when we read reviews that are wrong – when the customer is complaining about something that exists in our product...