Wayfnder Engagements · No. 03
Online Weight Loss Company.
Inherited an online weight-loss program where the client experience was rated NPS minus 100. Five months later it was plus 51. The back half of the engagement was hobbled by an inherited vendor scope problem and an R&D budget that contracted under us.
- Sector
- Founder-led Services
- Department
- R&D · Operations
- Engagement
- R&D Contractor
- Binding pillar
- Performance
- System installed
- Client Lifecycle Spine
- Period
- 2025–2026
NPS −100 → +51
Client experience score, five-month window
3x LTV
Long-range roadmap delivered
8 months
Total engagement window
12-month NDA
Client referenced by category only
01
The situation
An online weight-loss company with a brand presence and a client experience score sitting at NPS minus 100. The product worked. The system around the product did not. Intake, onboarding, ongoing coaching, and retention were stitched together across tools and teams without a common spine. The R&D contract was scoped to fix that.
02
The constraint
A Performance pillar problem at the lifecycle layer. The company had product-market signal but no client-facing operating model. Every team owned one slice of the experience and none owned the sequence. The lifecycle ran as a series of handoffs rather than a system, which is the gap NPS was reading.
03
The build
Wrote the Client Lifecycle Spine end to end: intake criteria, onboarding sequence, coaching cadence, retention triggers, and offboarding handled as one continuous flow. Sourced and stood up a new SaaS vendor to carry the operational layer. Mapped what each team owned and where the handoffs happened. Built the long-range roadmap projecting a 3x LTV at maturity.
04
The outcome
Client experience score moved from NPS minus 100 to plus 51 over the first five months. The 3x LTV roadmap was delivered and signed off. The lifecycle spine was operational and being run by the team. Inside the five months the system was given room to work, every input that was supposed to move did.
05
What makes the result durable
The lifecycle spine is documented and lives outside any single contributor. The roadmap is in the company's hands. The vendor selection holds whether or not the original contract continues. The numbers the system produced in its working window are the honest read of what the model does when it runs.
Counterpoint
What most firms would have done.
"Two things hobbled the back half of this engagement: a tech vendor scope problem I inherited, and an R&D budget that contracted under me. The numbers we hit happened in the five months where the system worked. That is the honest read."
Run a marketing engagement to top up the funnel and let the lifecycle problem age behind a louder front-end. The score would have stayed at minus 100, the retention curve would have stayed flat, and the eventual write-down would have been attributed to market conditions. We rebuilt the lifecycle first and let the numbers move in the order they actually move.
The shape of the work is the same across engagements. Find the binding pillar, install the system the team was missing, hand it back so it survives transitions. See the method →