DOC 715 Week 1 Strengthening the Research Problem Example

Making the Problem Undeniable: Strengthening a Dissertation Problem on Small-Business Churn

[Student Name]

University of Phoenix

DOC/715: Doctoral Seminar I

Week 1 Assignment

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The learner, the company, its customers and all figures are composites written for a model paper.

The learner is a composite director of customer success at Hill Country Software, a company in Austin, Texas, that sells scheduling and billing software by monthly subscription to about 14,000 small service businesses, such as hair salons, plumbing contractors and dog groomers. She entered the doctoral program because her team cannot keep new small-business customers. Her DOC 715 work begins by testing whether her problem statement is strong enough to carry a three-year dissertation and survive a committee's questions.

The First Draft

Her draft from an earlier course read: "Small businesses don't use our software enough and cancel. This is a problem because the company loses money. There is not enough research on this topic, and the company needs a proactive onboarding program."

The draft has four weaknesses. It names a symptom, low use, and an outcome, cancellation, without defining the problem. It offers no evidence. It claims a lack of research without showing what research exists. And it names a solution, a proactive onboarding program, inside the problem, which assumes the answer.

Organizational Evidence

Company data from the last three years show that 31 percent of new small-business customers cancel within twelve months, compared with 9 percent of customers in their second year. Cancellations are concentrated in the first 90 days: about two thirds of first-year cancellations occur then. Customers who cancel early used, on average, fewer than three of the software's eight core features. With roughly 5,000 new customers a year paying an average of about $95 a month, the 1,550 who leave in their first year take away about $1.8 million in annual recurring revenue, before counting sales and marketing costs of about $400 per customer that are never recovered.

The company already assigns some new customers to customer success managers for onboarding, depending on staffing and sales region, so some customers receive structured support and others receive only automated emails. No one knows whether that support makes a difference, because the company has never compared the two groups carefully.

Evidence From the Literature

Ascarza et al. (2018) reviewed research on customer retention management and argued that retention is a central concern for subscription businesses but that firms often target retention efforts poorly, aiming at customers predicted to leave rather than those whose behavior an intervention would actually change. They called for research on which interventions work for whom.

Gupta et al. (2006) reviewed models of customer lifetime value and showed that retention is among the strongest drivers of a customer's value to a firm, because each period a customer stays adds revenue and spreads acquisition costs. Early losses are therefore especially costly to a subscription business.

Hochstein et al. (2020) described customer success management as a rapidly growing practice in subscription businesses, in which firms proactively help customers achieve their goals with a product to secure renewals and expansion, and noted that academic research on the practice lagged far behind its adoption.

Companies have hired thousands of customer success managers, but research has barely begun to ask whether their work keeps customers.

The Gap

Together, the literature shows that retention matters greatly, that interventions should be targeted by their effect and that customer success management is widespread but little studied. What is not known is whether proactive onboarding by customer success managers changes first-year retention for small-business subscription customers, and for which customers it matters most. Most retention research uses large consumer or enterprise contexts; small-business customers, who have little time and few staff to learn new software, are rarely studied.

Who Is Affected

The problem affects more than the company's revenue. Small-business owners who cancel often do so after paying setup fees and spending hours entering customer lists, and many return to paper calendars or spreadsheets that cost them missed appointments. Customer success managers, measured on renewal rates, spend time on accounts that may not need them while others leave unnoticed. And investors in subscription software watch small-business churn closely because it limits growth. A problem statement that names these stakeholders shows the committee why the study matters beyond one company.

What Kind of Gap This Is

Gaps can be of several kinds: no research on a topic, research with conflicting results, research in other populations that may not transfer or research that has not tested a practice's effect. The gap here is mainly the last two. Retention research exists, but largely for consumer and enterprise customers, and customer success practices are widespread but their effects on retention have rarely been tested. Naming the kind of gap clarifies what the study must do to fill it: test an effect in an understudied population.

Narrowing the Scope

The problem is narrowed in four ways. Population: small service businesses with fewer than 20 employees. Setting: subscription software. Period: the first twelve months. Outcome: retention, with product use as a secondary outcome.

The Revised Problem Statement

"Subscription software firms lose a large share of small-business customers in their first year; at Hill Country Software, 31 percent cancel within twelve months, costing about $1.8 million a year in recurring revenue. Firms increasingly assign customer success managers to onboard new customers, yet research has not established whether proactive onboarding affects first-year retention among small-business customers or which customers benefit most. Without that evidence, firms cannot allocate scarce onboarding resources effectively."

Why This Version Is Stronger

The revision names a specific problem, early loss of small-business customers, with organizational evidence of scale and cost. It ties the problem to a documented gap in scholarship. It mentions onboarding as a practice whose effect is unknown, not as the answer the study must confirm. And it is narrow enough for one doctoral study.

Checking the Statement Against Other Firms

To show the problem extends beyond one company, the learner gathered public evidence: investor reports from two publicly traded small-business software firms describing higher churn among smaller customers and a trade association survey reporting similar patterns. These sources are not peer-reviewed and will be presented as practice evidence, clearly labeled as such.

Feedback From the Chair

The learner shared the revised statement with her prospective chair, who raised two points. First, the phrase "customer success managers" may be unfamiliar to committee members outside technology; the statement now defines the role briefly in the paragraph that follows it. Second, the cost figure should be presented as an estimate with its basis shown, so the committee can judge it; a footnote now explains the calculation from customer counts, prices and cancellation rates. Both changes make the problem easier to evaluate without changing its substance.

Conclusion

Weak first drafts name symptoms, lack evidence and assume solutions. A strengthened problem statement documents the scope and cost of early churn, connects it to research on retention and customer success and states what remains unknown for small-business customers. Week 2 will refine the purpose and research questions to match.

References

Ascarza, E., Neslin, S. A., Netzer, O., Anderson, Z., Fader, P. S., Gupta, S., Hardie, B. G. S., Lemmens, A., Libai, B., Neal, D., Provost, F., & Schrift, R. (2018). In pursuit of enhanced customer retention management: Review, key issues, and future directions. Customer Needs and Solutions, 5(1-2), 65-81. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40547-017-0080-0

Gupta, S., Hanssens, D., Hardie, B., Kahn, W., Kumar, V., Lin, N., Ravishanker, N., & Sriram, S. (2006). Modeling customer lifetime value. Journal of Service Research, 9(2), 139-155. https://doi.org/10.1177/1094670506293810

Hochstein, B., Rangarajan, D., Mehta, N., & Kocher, D. (2020). An industry/academic perspective on customer success management. Journal of Service Research, 23(1), 3-7. https://doi.org/10.1177/1094670519896422