Does adding features ever actually fix retention?

When churn spikes, our instinct is to build the "one missing feature" a customer asked for before leaving. But after shipping three major updates, our 30-day retention rate barely moved.

When we watched user session replays, we realized people weren't leaving because the product lacked power. They were leaving because they got overwhelmed within the first 5 minutes and never reached the "aha" moment.

Is retention almost always an onboarding problem in disguise, or do products genuinely die from lack of features?