Acting on insights

Insights is built to be read in ten minutes a week. This page is about turning what you read into decisions: a routine, how to decide what matters, how to check an insight before you act on it, and how to tune Insights so it keeps telling you the right things.

A weekly routine

Insights update at 05:00 on the first day of your week, and on the 1st of the month. Put ten minutes in your calendar right after.

1. Read the three money cards in the Situation room. Is unpaid above its usual line? Is a wave of discounts about to end?
2. Decide on your top priorities. For each of the three: Working on it, We know why or Hide. Deciding is the point, and it tells your team what's being handled.
3. Skim Also going on. Open anything new.
4. Work the Revenue at risk list. Start with the customers who are 8 to 30 days late and the renewals at risk, biggest first. Mark each one contacted when you've reached out.
5. Glance at Recently ended. Anything that went back to normal on its own, and anything you worked on.

At the month-close, take a few more minutes: that's when the full monthly story, changes in long-term differences and fresh suggestions arrive.

If a teammate owns part of the business (marketing, customer success, finance), turn on weekly or monthly email reports for them under Settings → Notifications. And if someone else chases payments, give them the Revenue at risk tab: Mark contacted keeps you from emailing the same customer twice.

Deciding what matters

The Situation room already ranks insights by the money at stake. A few things to add from your own judgment:

1. Things you can influence this week come first. Unpaid customers, renewals at risk and discounts about to end are fixable now. A long-term difference between regions isn't.
2. Ongoing before ended. A story that's still going is still costing (or making) money.
3. Important insights are very unlikely to be chance and worth a lot of MRR.

It's fine to read an insight and do nothing. Knowing that churn was high last month because of annual renewals, and that it's back to normal, is the insight doing its job.

Checking an insight

Every insight links to the report behind it, with the dates and filters already set. Before acting on something big:

• Open the report. See the number in context: the months around it, the breakdown, the customers.
• Check the driver. If the insight says "led by the UK", filter the report to the UK and look at the customers. Is it many customers, or one big one?
• Read the timeline. A story that started three months ago is different from a one-month blip.
• Consider your own changes. A price change, a new campaign, a billing cleanup or an import can all show up as insights. The insight is right that something changed; you may already know why. Then press We know why, and for the big things add it to your timeline, so everyone sees it on the charts.
• Ask AI. The Ask AI button opens GrowPanel AI with the insight and starts digging: which customers, which plans, what they said when they cancelled. Follow up with your own questions, like "Which of these customers have been with us longest?" or "Draft a friendly email to the customers whose card expires before their renewal."

If the numbers look wrong in the report too, the data may need attention. See Troubleshooting, or ask GrowPanel AI to check a customer against your billing system.

Playbooks

Unpaid above usual

1. Open Revenue at risk and pick Unpaid.
2. Leave the customers in their first week to the automatic retries. Most of them pay.
3. Email the customers who are 8 to 30 days late, biggest first. A personal note ("your card was declined, here's the link to update it") does more than another automated email. Mark each one contacted.
4. Call the ones over 30 days late who matter to you. Most invoices that late are never paid without someone reaching out.
5. If many failed at once, check for a pattern: one card brand, one country, one payment method. That points at your payment provider's settings, not your customers.

Renewals and cards

1. Pick Renewals at risk on the Revenue at risk tab: annual renewals in the next 30 days with a failed payment in the last year, or a card that expires first.
2. Ask those customers to check their card before the renewal invoice goes out. It's an easy email to send, and much easier than chasing a failed annual payment.
3. Do the same for Cards expiring on monthly plans, a few days before the next charge.

Unpaid for over a year

These customers still count in your MRR. Choose when past-due customers count as churned in your settings, or cancel them in your billing system. Your MRR gets smaller, and truer.

Churn up

1. Open the churn report filtered to the driver the insight names.
2. Sort by MRR and read the biggest cancellations. One big account is a conversation; many small ones are a pattern.
3. Read the cancellation reasons and comments. If "switched to another service" jumped, find out which service and why.
4. If failed payments drove it, look at dunning and card updates, not at the product.
5. Check again at the next close. If it's back to normal, you're done.

New business down

1. Find where the funnel broke: fewer leads, or fewer leads converting?
2. If fewer leads, check whether your marketing changed, and whether one channel or region explains it.
3. If conversion fell, look at what changed in the trial or onboarding, and at who the new leads are.
4. If the drop followed something you changed, like a campaign you stopped, decide whether it was worth it, and put the change on your timeline.

Discounts ending

1. Filter the CMRR report to the month and see which customers' discounts end.
2. Tell them before the first full-price invoice, with what they get for the price.
3. Watch churn in the two months after the wave. A lot of it is a sign your discounts attract customers who only stay for the discount.

Failed payments up

1. Check whether it's one payment method, one country or one card issuer.
2. Look at your payment provider's retry schedule and automatic card updates.
3. Check the Recovery rate a few weeks later. Most failed payments are recovered; the ones that aren't are lost MRR.

A group changed

1. Ask what's different about that group this period: a campaign, a partner, a price, a local event, a competitor.
2. For good news, find out what caused it so you can do it again.
3. For bad news, open the report filtered to the group and treat it like the playbooks above.

A long-term difference appeared or changed

Differences tell you who behaves differently, not what to change. Before acting, read Acting on a difference. Moving customers to the "better" plan or billing interval rarely gives them its numbers.

Telling Insights what you think

Every current insight has the same three choices:

• Working on it: you're on it. It stays on the page until it's back to normal. Good news gets Noted instead, which moves it down the list.
• We know why: you know what caused it, and it moves down the list. Add a timeline event… puts what caused it on every report chart, for the big things.
• Hide: Not now parks it at the bottom of the list. Not relevant to us or The numbers look wrong take it off the start page. Hide all insights about … (for owners and admins) switches off that kind of insight for the account. Turn it back on in Insights settings.

We look at the reasons as anonymous counts across all accounts to improve how insights are found. They're never used to train AI models.

Tuning Insights to your business

The right amount of insights depends on your business. In Insights settings, owners and admins can move the slider from Only the biggest to Everything:

• Start at Normal. It's built for the balance most businesses want.
• Move toward Fewer if you're reading insights you don't act on, or if your business is large and steady, where even a small share of MRR is a lot of money.
• Move toward More if your business is small or early and you want to see smaller moves, or for a month when you're watching closely after a big change.
• Switch off kinds you don't need. If you only care about the whole business, switch off changes in a group.

Changing the slider rebuilds your insights, history included, within about ten minutes.

What Insights won't tell you

• Why, with certainty. It finds where a change came from and what moved with it. The deeper why is often in conversations with customers.
• About things it can't see. Your roadmap, your sales pipeline, a competitor's launch.
• About tiny changes. Anything below the minimum impact for your setting stays quiet by design.
• About good news that has become normal. If something improves steadily, Insights stops telling you after it becomes the new normal. Your reports still show it.