Response Flow
Overview
The Response Flow is a Sankey diagram that shows the paths customers take through your Structured Follow-Up Questions. The left column represents primary survey choices. The right column represents the follow-up options selected within each primary choice. Colored flows connect the two, with the width of each flow proportional to the number of customer responses along that path.
This visualization answers a question that raw numbers alone cannot: where exactly are customers going after they select a primary reason, and how do those paths compare? Instead of reading a table of counts, you see the distribution at a glance. If 70% of "Too Expensive" respondents flow into "Not seeing enough ROI", that pattern is immediately visible as a dominant band in the diagram.
Where to Find It
- Navigate to Cancel Flows in your Churnkey dashboard
- Click Analytics in the top navigation
- Scroll to the Response Flow section
The diagram appears automatically when you have Structured Follow-Up Questions configured and customers have submitted responses. If no follow-up responses exist yet, this section will not display data.
Reading the Diagram
Each primary survey choice on the left is represented as a labeled block. Each follow-up option on the right is a separate block. The flows between them are color-coded to match the primary survey choice they originate from, making it easy to trace which follow-up responses belong to which primary reason.
Width indicates volume. A wider flow means more customers selected that particular path. A narrow flow means fewer did. This lets you quickly identify the dominant sub-reasons within each primary category without reading exact numbers.
Hover for details. Moving your cursor over any flow reveals a tooltip with three data points:
Response count -- the absolute number of customers who followed that path.
Percentage -- the share of total responses that this path represents.
MRR -- the total monthly recurring revenue of the customers who followed that path. This is the metric that connects survey feedback to financial impact.
Using the Response Flow Effectively
Identifying Dominant Paths
Start by looking at the widest flows. These represent the most common customer journeys through your survey and follow-up questions. If one follow-up option within a primary category dominates, it tells you that the primary reason is not as general as it seems -- most customers mean something very specific.
For example, if your "Missing Features" primary choice has four follow-up options but 65% of customers select "Need a reporting dashboard", then "Missing Features" is effectively a proxy for one particular feature request. This insight should influence both your product roadmap and the offer you associate with that follow-up option.
Comparing Across Primary Choices
The diagram lets you compare the distribution of follow-up responses across different primary choices. Some primary choices might fan out evenly across their follow-up options, indicating a genuinely diverse set of sub-reasons. Others might concentrate heavily into one or two follow-ups, indicating that the primary choice has a dominant underlying cause.
Primary choices with even distributions benefit from the Freeform + Structured response mode, because the customer's true reason might not fit neatly into any single follow-up option. Primary choices with concentrated distributions benefit from targeted offers on the dominant follow-up option, because the investment will reach the largest share of respondents.
Tracking Revenue Exposure
Hover over the paths that represent your highest MRR to understand where the greatest financial risk sits. A path with 10 responses at $200 MRR each represents more revenue at risk than a path with 50 responses at $20 MRR each. The tooltip makes this comparison straightforward.
Use this information to prioritize which follow-up paths get the strongest offers. If the "Not seeing enough ROI" path within "Too Expensive" carries $15,000 in monthly recurring revenue, that path deserves a carefully considered retention offer with a compelling value proposition.
Exporting Data
The Response Flow supports two export formats.
PNG -- Download the Sankey diagram as an image file. Useful for including in presentations, executive reports, or team communications where visual context helps convey the story.
CSV -- Download the underlying data as a spreadsheet. Each row contains the primary choice, the follow-up option, the response count, the percentage, and the MRR. This format supports deeper analysis in tools like Excel, Google Sheets, or your business intelligence platform.
Both export options are accessible from the export controls at the top of the Response Flow section.