How to handle cancellations like a pro
Don’t forgot your customer’s last impression
Hi there,
It sucks when a customer stops using your product, and it’s hard not to take it personally.
Sometimes they sneak away silently, they stop ordering and you realise when you segment out “haven’t bought in 90 days”.
Other times, it’s a big CANCEL moment, they cancel their subscription and it breaks your heart.
At Heights when I was Head of Growth we had a cancellation channel. Every time a customer cancelled we’d get a notification with the reason why - absolutely heartbreaking. I have to admit… I muted the channel.
But here’s the thing - as difficult as it can be, you can’t just sit idly and let it happen.
By this, I don’t mean do everything in your power to stop them from cancelling. I mean make sure you have a proper send off. Last impressions matter.
We spend so much time optimising our welcome and post-purchase flows but what about cancellation flows? The best we do is a winback flow for those silently snuck away customers.
Instead we need to focus on three things:
Minimise friction at cancellation to make it an easy and good experience
Strive to understand what happened
Adjust the communication based on that
I love what Butternut Box, a raw dog food subscription, does; when an owner cancels because their pet dies, Butternut Box sends them flowers!
So optimise that experience, and you’ll be surprised at how much more churn you can deflect, but even when you can’t, leave them with a good feeling. And who knows when they will come back.
As a dog owner, I can imagine many of those owners will eventually get another dog, and they will be much more likely to return to Butternut Box.
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Recommendation
SaaS brands are great at dealing with cancellation moments because they are a 100% subscription. So why not look outside of your usual examples and check out some of the best SaaS cancellation flows? There are a lot of learnings there for D2C startups
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Not the happiest of topics: cancellations and dogs passing (it gives me shivers just thinking about losing Loki) but it is an important one.
As much as first impressions matter, so do lasts.
Chat soon,
Daphne