Users hesitate at signup. A few weeks in, they stop seeing the value. Then they churn. And it's hard to know why. I help teams find out and fix it.
I use the data you already have (customer calls, reviews, support tickets, surveys) so you keep more of your users and grow. When the data is missing, I go and find it, fast.
Products lose people at the same few moments.
Onboarding, private data, and value over time. I spent over five years at WhatsApp designing for exactly these moments, for 3B+ people.
Your insights hub
Get everyone on the same page.
Customer insights are scattered across your org, with everyone building from a different piece of the puzzle. I pull all your data into one live system, and use established playbooks from my time at Meta to weigh the evidence into top priorities: the biggest challenges, opportunities, and areas to explore further. It becomes a live executive briefing tool, and the resource every new hire onboards with.
What's working
- Members who log three nights in week one stay.
- The coach's tone builds trust.
What's not working
- Too many permissions before people see value.
- Annual renewal catches people off guard.
Explore next
- Why shift workers drop off.
- Whether couples want a shared plan.
One finding, opened up
People quit in week one, before the plan feels personal.
High. Research, customer support and social listening all say it.
New members, and people who quit in their first week.
US users only so far. Check before the UK launch.
Open the app to three simple recommendations from what the coach has learned. Test the mocks with week-one quitters first.
- Research · interview with a new member"By day five I didn't know what it had learned."
- Customer support · member, 3 months"My plan looks the same as on day one."
- Social listening · Reddit · unverified, no matching account"Felt like a generic sleep diary."
How I work
Close the gaps that matter for growth.
- Hear from more than your power users
People who fit your ICP but never signed up, dropped off in onboarding, or churned. What else they use, and whether they're building their own fix with AI.
- Organize what you already know
Support, reviews, calls and past research, labeled by pain points, what people like, your value proposition, the competition and what's still unknown.
- Put real designs in front of users
What would you use this for? How would you get started? Then fix the exact places people drop off, not a generic redesign.
- Reassure at privacy-sensitive moments
Test the words and the mocks with a real range of users, not just the ones who are already comfortable.
- Double down on why people stay
Find the value that keeps people coming back, and build the features and experiences that keep it going.
- Keep the signal coming
Surveys at the right product moments and a standing user panel, so it's easy for your team to get consistent signals directly from your users.
Every project starts with setting up your insights hub.
It's the homework, and where the hypotheses for everything after come from. Usually a one-week sprint: your data in, a live hub and a plan out. Then we take on whichever gap is costing you most.
"Talene has rare, grounded instinct for what businesses actually need, not just what sounds good on paper. Anyone building complex, high-stakes products would be lucky to partner with her."
"Sharp analytical thinking and clear, calm communication. Talene has consistently met, and exceeded, the high expectations she set from day one."
Hi, I'm Talene.
I work with growing companies to close the insight gaps that matter for the growth of their business: why users churn, why users love them, and how to retain them over time. I also build AI-powered systems that organize customer insights, so teams stay focused on the right problems and move faster.
Before this, I spent over five years as a lead researcher at WhatsApp, and won the WhatsApp Insights Award for outstanding communication and partnerships. My work there:
- Business AI. Led research for a product that grew from 1M to 10M+ weekly conversations within a quarter of launch, and turned how small businesses actually sell into LLM instructions that shipped.
- Pricing. Found the pricing incentive behind businesses spamming users, which contributed to the shift to per-message pricing.
- Ads. Shaped how ads were introduced to 1.5B+ daily users in Status and Channels, and ran the research behind an ad transparency surface for 3B+ users.
Before that, a PhD at Oxford, with research cited by RAND. I'm based in Boston.
Let's talk about where you're losing people.
In 30 minutes, we'll look at where you're losing people and what's worth finding out first. Or email me your company name and I'll send you a dashboard of what your customers are already telling you.