Signed merchants, quiet accounts and no view of where they stalled
Onboarding metrics showed how many merchants signed. They did not show how many of those merchants ever processed a live transaction, or where in the path between contract and go-live an account went quiet.
Support tickets hinted at documentation gaps and integration friction, but nothing tied those complaints to specific drop-off points a product or onboarding team could act on.
The client needed the path reconstructed, account by account, to find the fixes worth prioritising rather than another aggregate onboarding-funnel chart.
We interviewed the merchants who signed and then went quiet
Interviews with onboarded-but-inactive merchants reconstructed what actually happened after signup: what documentation was requested, what the sandbox environment did and did not replicate, and where settlement and reconciliation setup stalled.
Developers who had run the integration themselves were interviewed alongside the merchants, since a technical drop-off and a business drop-off can look identical in a funnel chart but require different fixes.
Every stall point was tied back to the merchant's revenue potential, so the fix list could be ranked by what it was actually worth recovering, not just by how often a problem occurred.
A ranked fix list, not another onboarding diagram
Isolating where accounts went dormant, documentation gaps, sandbox parity issues, and settlement and reconciliation setup, produced a ranked fix list the product and onboarding teams could act on directly.
A revised onboarding sequence targeted the drop-off points carrying the most revenue first, rather than treating every stall point as equally urgent.
The client could now defend which fix to build next with a reason attached to it, instead of a general sense that onboarding needed improvement.
