I was a new product manager at Fiverr, responsible for the post-order user journey. This meant working with users after they made a purchase, focusing on their communication and delivery. The main KPI was retention, which, unsurprisingly, was highly correlated with user satisfaction.

Initially, the team focused on improving satisfaction by reacting to bad experiences. We put a lot of effort into identifying and approaching users who had bad experiences, hoping to turn their dissatisfaction into a positive one. This seemed like a clear and effective approach, especially because retention was our primary metric.

We also invented a whole new KPI that the whole company was focused on: “Missed orders”. (And the goal was to reduce it)

I was deeply invested in this strategy and proud of the vision and the KPI I had created. However, after several tests in my ownership area that yielded little impact, I realized that we had missed a critical aspect of the process. Through conversations, including with my husband who is an MD, I realized that our focus on fixing bad experiences was only part of the solution. The real breakthrough came when we recognized that prevention is the best medicine. Instead of investing energy into solving problems after they occurred, we needed to focus on preventing them in the first place.