This article is about how we’re reducing customer churn within the account account deletion steps. Link to article.
I didn’t know if this was the place to post this link. I wrote this yesterday. We’ve had this in production for two months. I’ll post the data we’ve seen in a few weeks.
I really like this. You not only potentially stop the user from downgrading, but you also give yourself a chance to learn more about your customers. Very smart.
Really interested in the results of this especially the too expensive option as once word of that gets out you could really impact your overall revenue as everyone opts to say it is too expensive - great idea though and cant wait to see the outcome.
I really really doubt that a meaningful number of people would go through the account deletion process just to get a little discount. Imagine you have this accounting system with all your data loaded in it and your bank accounts set up, etc… how crazy would you have to be to go all the way through the account deletion process hoping that on the last screen you’ll be offered a discount and your account won’t get deleted?
A sane person who is strapped for cash would simply call the support number and do a little begging for a discount. Everybody knows you can do that, and despite that I am guessing most LessAccounting customers pay the advertised price.
I am not implying people would cancel hoping to get a discount but, if they knew they would get one automatically simply by clicking that button and that their account would not be deleted, then that is different - in effect it becomes a “Give me a discount button” hence why I am really interested in the results as my gut feel is it could become perilous IF customers not considering cancelling find out about it
I understand what you’re saying, but in my opinion it’s highly unlikely to be “perilous”.
The main point I wanted to make and the reason I replied to your post was that it seemed to come from a place of worry: a worry that somehow customers are constantly on the lookout for ways to not give you your money and are efficient at disseminating tips on loopholes among themselves.
I used to have worries like that a long time ago, but now it just seems silly to me to worry about such things. If there’s one thing I learned over the last few years of running my own SaaS is that most of the crap I do (good and bad) goes unnoticed by even my best customers. If they decided my product is valuable, and I don’t screw up too badly, then they just want to get on with their lives.
That’s my experience at least, but I guess it depends on the market, product, price point, etc… Have you experienced a situation where large numbers of customers use loopholes to pay less?
If giving a 15% ($6) discount gets users to stay an extra month than I’m happy. It’s all about building customer inertia, I’m hoping a small discount buys us more time & more customer involvement with our feature set.
The option has been there since late Jan 1st 2014, we’ve had 12 people use the discount. 7 of those people are still active. I don’t know if this is proof that “it works” or “it doesn’t”, who knows.
Allan - can you share any of the other results yet? For example, how many visited the page in total and how many chose to cancel for another reason?
I don’t have any data pre-change to conclude the current setup is better. I do get more information out of why they’re deleting their account and about 30-40% of people that go thru this process put their account on hold instead of deleting them entirely (which is better than deletion).