Fini Product Features
Feb 17, 2025
Deepak Singla
IN this article
Expectations have changed. The growth-at-any-cost paradigm that fuelled the last 10 years of expansion has finally come to an end. It’s no longer acceptable to spend $ on acquiring users if the LTV:CAC < 1. Retention is the new unicorn KPI.
Acquiring a new customer can cost five times more than retaining an existing customer. Let that sink in.
For most companies user retention has been an afterthought - not anymore.
Expectations have changed. The growth-at-any-cost paradigm that fuelled the last 10 years of expansion has finally come to an end. It’s no longer acceptable to spend $ on acquiring users if the LTV:CAC < 1. Retention is the new unicorn KPI.
“Increasing customer retention rates by just 5% can increase profits by between 25% and 95%” (Bain and Company)
But if it’s so important to retain your existing users, why do companies ignore it? Well to start with, most companies don’t understand retention as a metric. Of all the metrics, it’s the least understood.
So what is retention? Simply put, retention measures the ability of your product to keep users engaged over time. For a business like Uber, engagement is measured by platform transactions. For Instagram it’s daily in-app activity, for Netflix it’s active subscribers. It’s that simple!
Since we are talking about the Uber story, let’s dive into how we did this at Uber!
First, we spent a lot of time on reducing the “time to value”.
If you are a low ticket consumer business and it takes more than 7 clicks for a user to complete the first transaction on your platform - you have already lost 70% of customers. We’ve seen businesses try to show every single feature right after users land on the product. It doesn’t work and users will buy nothing. You have to reduce the cognitive load by showing the most relevant feature and focusing on reducing time to value. For first-time users, your only objective should be to make sure that the users complete a transaction on your platform. Even it’s $1. Why? Because it drives intent and trust in your customers to explore more.
Second, maximize feature- and product-adoption
After you have done a good job at activating the users, you have to hammer home the most important features and ensure users see the most relevant content. At Uber we noticed that people who used multiple products had xx% higher retention than users who used only one product (that’s a double digit lift!). How did we do this? By orchestrating the “next best action” using a predictive event-driven engine. Imagine you could only send one push notification to your user per month. Just one. What do you do? You identify the user activity in your app and infer the next best feature to upsell. And then you use the CMC framework to upsell the user:
🧔🏻♂️ C = Cohort: identify dynamic cohorts that will yield the highest ROI
⭐️ M = Moment: leverage the in-app activity to identify the right moments
💬 C = Channel: no one likes spams across multiple channels, use personalized channels that drive the highest CTR
“Strike while the iron is hot” - introduce your top features and product to the right cohorts, at opportune moments through the right channels.
Finally, most important of all - identify the silent sufferers
Humans have one thing in common - everyone hates friction.
Recent app-user feedback we read says: “If I am stuck somewhere in the app, it becomes my problem, even if it isn’t. Then I have to spend 10 minutes to raise a support issue. When I finally do, the agent replies back asking me to describe the issue in more detail. C’mon, I had a failure in your app, look at the logs, figure it out - it’s your problem, not mine”.
When people face issues they take the easy way out. They suffer silently for a while and then they simply churn - because who likes a back and forth with the support agent?
Remember: people who reach out to your support are actually gold - they love your product, that’s why they took the time and decided to reach out, they likely won’t leave.
Put double the focus on the users who NEVER reach out, they are the “silent sufferers”. They are the ones who don’t care. Because they have an alternative. If you want to stop people going to your competitors, you need to understand their in-app behaviour and offer them a solution before they leave. At Uber we became really good at using in-app activity to identify silent sufferers at risk of churn, and proactively solving their problems.
So what’s ahead?
It’s time to empower your organization to keep the users it has fought so hard to acquire.
The best companies are already on top of this. They use customer storytelling backed by cold-hard facts, enabled by superior platforms that make customer pain-points crystal clear. Even when the customer is silently churning.
This is our mission here at Fini (YC S22)
Understanding Retention & Customer Value
1. What does it mean to unlock value from existing customers?
It means identifying ways to increase revenue, engagement, or satisfaction from users who already use your product, rather than constantly focusing on acquiring new customers.
2. Why is retention considered more valuable than acquisition today?
Retaining a customer is typically 5x cheaper than acquiring a new one. High retention leads to better LTV:CAC ratios, recurring revenue, and increased lifetime value with minimal new spend.
3. What is meant by the shift from “growth at all costs” to sustainable retention?
Earlier, businesses could justify large acquisition spend without immediate ROI. Now, in a more cost-conscious market, companies must prove that they can hold on to users and generate value long term.
4. What’s the significance of the LTV:CAC ratio in retention strategy?
LTV:CAC compares how much value a customer brings (LTV) to how much it cost to acquire them (CAC). If LTV is not greater than CAC, growth becomes unsustainable.
5. Why do companies often ignore retention despite its impact?
Retention is often misunderstood, harder to measure, and lacks immediate gratification compared to new user acquisition metrics. It requires deeper user insights and infrastructure investment.
6. What metric best captures retention for your product?
This varies by company. For Uber, it was ride transactions; for Netflix, it’s active subscriptions. Choose a metric tied to the core value delivered by your product.
7. How does understanding the “time to value” help improve retention?
Time to value is how fast a new user experiences your product’s core benefit. Reducing it drastically increases activation rates and early engagement.
8. Why is reducing cognitive load critical for first-time users?
If users are overwhelmed by too many features or unclear UX during onboarding, they drop off. Simplicity helps them achieve quick wins, which builds long-term trust.
Tactics to Improve Retention
9. What’s the first step to unlocking more value from existing users?
Make the initial experience frictionless. Ensure the user can complete one meaningful action quickly—this is foundational for building habit and trust.
10. What is the role of micro-conversions in increasing retention?
Small wins—like successful signups, logins, or completing onboarding tasks—build user momentum and encourage continued engagement.
11. How can you boost feature adoption post-onboarding?
Use intelligent upsells based on behavioral signals and surface relevant features at the right time using targeted messaging.
12. What is the “next best action” strategy in retention?
This strategy involves identifying the most logical next feature or product a user should explore based on their behavior, and prompting them to take that step.
13. How does Uber personalize upsell opportunities?
By segmenting users into cohorts, identifying trigger moments, and using the best-fit communication channel. This is done using the CMC framework.
14. What is the CMC framework and how does it improve user adoption?
CMC stands for Cohort, Moment, and Channel. It ensures personalized messaging reaches the right user at the right time, in the most effective format.
15. Why is cross-product usage linked to higher retention?
Users engaging with more than one feature often derive greater value, increasing stickiness and the likelihood of recurring interaction.
16. How can AI help identify relevant upsell moments?
AI can analyze user behavior in real time, predict next actions, and trigger contextual nudges or messages that increase engagement and conversions.
Addressing Silent Churn
17. What is silent churn and why is it dangerous?
Silent churn occurs when users stop using the product without voicing dissatisfaction. These users often leave without warning, and without ever contacting support.
18. How can you identify silent sufferers in your product?
By tracking drop-offs, abandoned flows, or long inactivity periods despite prior engagement. Tools like session replays and event analytics help uncover these patterns.
19. Why are users who reach out to support more valuable than silent sufferers?
Because they care enough to try resolving their issues. Their outreach is a signal of intent to stay, unlike silent sufferers who simply disappear.
20. What kind of proactive support can reduce silent churn?
Use in-app nudges, preemptive fixes based on logs, or direct messages offering help when patterns indicate friction before a user has to ask.
21. What mindset shift is needed to serve silent sufferers?
Support needs to shift from reactive to proactive—understanding that many at-risk users won’t file a ticket and that action must be taken before they leave.
Data, Segmentation & Activation
22. How do dynamic cohorts help with unlocking customer value?
They allow real-time segmentation based on user behavior, enabling more personalized targeting and support strategies for different user groups.
23. What role does product analytics play in retention?
Analytics gives insights into what users are doing, what they’re not, and when they drop off—informing decisions that improve UX and reduce churn.
24. How should you measure the success of retention initiatives?
Track metrics like Day 1, 7, 30 retention, churn rate, repeat engagement, NPS, and feature adoption velocity.
25. Why is event-driven personalization so powerful for upsells?
It enables timely, relevant prompts based on what a user has just done (or failed to do), improving likelihood of conversion or re-engagement.
Strategy & Culture
26. Why is it important to build retention into your product culture early?
It prevents wasted growth spend and builds a product that users actually want to return to. It’s easier to retain users than to reacquire them later.
27. How can startups avoid building features nobody wants?
By validating demand first—ensuring people are willing to pay or use a minimum solution before building a full product.
28. What’s the benefit of viewing churn as a signal, not just a loss?
Churn is feedback. Understanding why users leave helps refine your product and stop others from leaving for the same reason.
29. How should customer support and product teams collaborate on retention?
Support insights should be fed back into product strategy to prioritize fixes, reduce friction, and align on user experience priorities.
30. How can B2C and B2B retention strategies differ?
B2C often focuses on habit loops and emotional engagement. B2B focuses more on ROI, integration depth, and stakeholder trust—but both benefit from personalization.
Case Study Specific: Uber's Retention Lessons
31. What did Uber do to improve first-time user conversions?
They reduced the steps to transaction, prioritized a $1 value moment to trigger trust, and simplified onboarding to minimize drop-offs.
32. How did Uber track user engagement for upsells?
Uber used predictive event engines to infer which feature to introduce next, and targeted users accordingly to boost multi-product usage.
33. What was Uber’s biggest realization about user churn?
That silent sufferers were the biggest risk—users who faced friction but didn’t speak up. Identifying and resolving their pain proactively had the largest impact.
34. Why did Uber stop trying to show all features upfront?
Too much choice paralyzed users. Focused feature exposure based on user journey yielded much better retention and satisfaction.
Fini’s Retention Philosophy
35. How does Fini help companies reduce silent churn?
By using AI-powered agents that detect frustration patterns and automatically resolve or escalate issues, reducing friction without needing a support ticket.
36. What makes Fini different from traditional support tools for retention?
Fini goes beyond reactive chat—its proactive engine learns from logs, triggers flows, and adapts responses based on behavioral signals to protect retention.
37. How does Fini ensure users feel heard even when they don’t ask for help?
Fini identifies drop-off patterns and sends timely, relevant support or education nudges so users get assistance without needing to reach out.
38. Can Fini personalize retention efforts at scale?
Yes, Fini’s platform uses real-time user data and product context to personalize support, upsells, and education—without needing manual segmentation.
39. What impact can Fini have on retention metrics?
Companies using Fini report increases in Day 7 and Day 30 retention, higher feature engagement, and a noticeable drop in ticket volume and churn.
40. Why should retention be owned by product, support, and growth together?
Because retention is a shared outcome. Only when all three functions align—on onboarding, education, and proactive support—can customer lifetime value be maximized.
Co-founder
