Metrics question
You are a PM at Slack. Slack is losing customers big time after Microsoft Teams got launched. What would you do?
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What this question tests
Tests competitive response strategy: diagnosing why customers are churning and proposing a defensible, metric grounded retention plan.
How to approach it
- Diagnose why customers are leaving: pricing bundled with Microsoft 365, deeper enterprise integration, or feature parity gaps.
- Segment churned customers by size and use case, since small teams and large enterprises likely churn for different reasons.
- Identify Slack's differentiators to defend, such as its app ecosystem and workflow automation, that Teams does not match as well.
- Propose retention initiatives: deepen integrations with tools Teams does not support well, and address pricing pressure for bundled Microsoft customers.
- Define success: net revenue retention and churn rate among the specific segments most at risk.
- Confirm with the interviewer whether the focus is enterprise or SMB customers, since the fight differs by segment.
What a strong answer includes
- Diagnoses the real driver, Microsoft bundling Teams free with Office 365 licenses many enterprises already pay for, creating pricing pressure Slack cannot fully match.
- Segments the response, defending SMB and tech forward customers with superior app ecosystem and workflow automation, since that is Slack's clearest differentiation.
- Proposes deepening specific integrations, like developer tools and CRM workflows, where Slack's ecosystem still outpaces Teams.
- Sets a measurable goal, for example a stated improvement in net revenue retention among at risk enterprise accounts within two quarters.
Common mistakes
- Proposing to compete on price against a bundled free offering, which is a losing battle against Microsoft's bundling power.
- Treating all churned customers the same instead of segmenting by why they specifically left.
Likely follow-up questions
- How would you compete against a product bundled for free with something customers already pay for?
- Which customer segment would you prioritize saving first, and why?
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Learn the skill behind it
Chapters of the AI PM course that teach what this question tests.
- Chapter 9: Prove it paid off: outcomes, economics, and pricing
- Chapter 2: Data fluency: SQL, logs, and reading the truth yourself
- Chapter 14: Get the job: the AI PM interview loop