How To Prevent Customer Attrition

This video is about how to properly handle potential subscription cancellations, prevent them from canceling, keep them subscribed. That's what this video is about.

The best cancellation I ever saw was from a service company and it was a membership, a SAS membership service company. It was run by a man who was very about the fact that it was his company and he was running it and it was his baby and you couldn't buy the product without knowing that he was involved. And he would send personal emails to people and it was really cool company and cool that he was so involved and I thought it was cool anyway.

[This is a transcription] First thing that happens when you go on the website and you hit I want to cancel my membership because they had a portal is it takes you to this page with a questionnaire and there were five different questions about why you're canceling and you can make these up as you go along.

Is there anything we did to upset you? Is there anything that I can do to make you happier without you canceling? We'd love to keep you ... Tell us what we can do better things like this. But it was all very personal and very specific to the way that their company communicates with their customers. It was the same tone. They did a great job at that. It was felt like it was his ... You were canceling his company, not the software. Why can't I make you happy was the way it felt. It was very personal and very effective. You go through your questionnaire and then you hit submit and it takes you do another landing page and this page had this very long message, but it was really easy to read. They clearly had a professional copywriter write this because it was punctuated, special ... That was very engaging writing, but again, it had the same tone and it was as if it was written from the CEO and founder, very personal. I'm so sad that you're canceling, you're leaving. We were so happy to have you as a member and your membership meant everything to us. Is there anything we can do to make you happy? Is there anything I should have done differently or could do in the future? Would you please give us another chance?

Okay, so some of you might be thinking that's a little bit too desperate. I would never do that, but I'm telling you, it came off wonderfully. It felt like I was canceling his company when of course I went through the whole path. It felt like I was canceling his company and I can't tell you how unbelievably effective it was. It's an unbelievable strategy to try and keep people on without having them call customer service, which saves you money. This is a real save the subscriber strategy without actually having them call your customer service so it costs you no money except the upfront to develop the path.

In the event that somebody did decide they wanted to cancel, they were then taken to a third page which offered them a 50% off to keep subscribed. They've been hit already with a questionnaire, what can we do? And then the page two, which was a very emotional and personal cancellation like I was hurting the guy's feelings from canceling his company. And then on the third they said, okay, fine, please stay. Here's 50% off. We know we can treat you better. I mean, I'm telling you, it was just an unbelievable strategy for keeping subscribers.

Make sure that before you offer discounts with your customer service reps or through the path, the structured online path, make sure that you offer people the opportunity to upgrade and downgrade. Many people don't even understand that there's different tiers. And specific to SAS companies, there's a lot of different tiers and different services that they might not be using and they don't necessarily need to pay for anymore. Well, I don't want to pay $89 anymore. I hardly use this. Well, you sound like somebody more for our economy class, which is a much simpler 9.99 option. People would probably downgrade to that and keep the service.

And if you own a consumer good, you can do the same thing. Just make anything up. It's your company. You know you're in our platinum program right now. Why don't we push you down to the bronze and you'll pay a little bit less and you'll get x and y which you still really like and it will be a great opportunity for you to continue down this path you're on or whatever it is that you're going to say.

If you sell a shoelaces membership, maybe they don't want three shoelaces sent to them every month. Maybe they just want one. I don't maybe have to discount my pricing for that. I just have to send them less shoelaces.

Now is that better than keeping them at the same billing amount for a consumer good brand and just throwing product at them? Probably not, but it is a way to find out what works best for your brand.

You are in charge of the story. You're telling people about your brand. They will believe what you tell them. If they are three months into their subscription and that qualifies them for an increased monthly delivery at no extra charge and that's just something you fabricated on the phone to try and get them stay on as a subscriber, mission accomplished. They'll believe it. They'll be happy about it. Maybe they're not canceling their subscription. I'm not suggesting that's a great idea. I'm just trying to illustrate the fact that you are in charge of the perception in their mind and they have no idea what's going on with your company behind closed doors. You get to tell them. And so if you need to figure out a good story to tell people to keep them subscribed, be clear. We're not tricking people here, we're just telling them the story to try and get them to stay subscribed. No different than selling your product. Now you're trying to sell them on why they're staying subscribed and you can come up with infinite reasons for that and I would encourage you to do so.

The absolute most important thing, as I've said in many videos is to make sure that subscribers call to cancel. They've got to call. If they don't call, they're going to cancel easily, quickly, no problem. And your profit is going to plummet. Your predictions for the future of the growth and profitability and cashflow of the company is going to plummet. Make sure that people call to cancel. This is the reason that you have a good customer service team. Reps will save you tons of money. They will make you more money than they cost you, I assure you. So make sure that you leverage a team or even one person to handle customer service and to make sure that they're skilled in the way of keeping subscribers on.

If they're not skilled or even if they are, it's important to have a script, a specific strategy because a customer service rep or company you hired a handle, it's not going to know your numbers. They're not going to know where you need to be before you lose money and they need permissions up to a certain level. Offer them a 10 or 15% discount first, then go to 25 then go to 50 then if they say they're going to charge back, you can go down to 30% and we'll end up losing money there, but at least it saves us the 15 or $30 whatever that ends up being, that it would get charged for a charge back.

In that script, they also need to make sure that before any discounts are given, the first thing they ask is why they bought the product first and then reestablish the value of ... I wanted to have, I don't know, let's say it was a skin cream. I wanted to get rid of my wrinkles. Well our product is great for that and they sell the product again. And then if the customer can't get happy there, then work into the discounts.

There's a couple of actionable strategies for you to prevent subscribers from canceling and hopefully you enjoyed this video. If you did, make sure you like, hit subscribe, comment below. My name's Bobby Dietz, I own a digital marketing agency and if you are interested in having a free audit done of all of your Facebook, Google, and email marketing campaigns, we are very happy to do that for you for free. Sometimes we find nothing. Sometimes we find some pretty egregious errors and we're happy to share anything we find with you at no cost.

About the Author

I am Bobby Dietz, an entrepreneur, content creator, and advertising professional. I am the Co-founder of ATTN Digital Marketing Agency and have entrepreneurial experience operating businesses in nutrition, cosmetics, automotive and travel. Follow me on LinkedIn for daily advertising tactics, business vlogs, book reviews, and more.

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