Cancel Flow Best Practices Guide – Skio

Outline:

Overview
Considerations
Generic cancellation reasons
Additional cancellation reasons for inspiration
Conditional cancel flow logic explained

Overview

The purpose of this article is to assist with setting up Skio's Cancel Flows. This exciting feature has been specifically designed to reduce churn, increase retention and optimize the overall UX when it comes to cancelling subscriptions. We will cover a variety of use cases and settings you can use/implement to help prevent cancellations and keep your customers subscribed.

Cancel Flow v2 requires the new Customer Portal. Here's how to upgrade to the new customer portal: Upgrading to New Skio Customer Portal

Considerations

We highly recommend enabling this feature and tying an action to each cancel flow. The process for customers to cancel remains easy when this feature isn'’t set up, which typically results in leaving revenue on the table. Be sure to tailor your cancellation reasons so they’re specific to your brand/product!

We've built in a Cancel Flow dashboard to our native analytics. We recommend monitoring Cancel Flow performance with this dashboard as it will help you understand the reasons customers are cancelling. With this data you can not only optimize the cancellation process for your subscription program, you can also collect valuable data to optimize your email win-back flows. Here'’s a handy link to our win-back best practices guide to optimize your win-back flows.Best Practices
If your product is designed to be consumed as part of a consumer's routine, we recommend indicating this in various areas or stages of the customer journey for your online store and notifications. For e.g on the product display page, in your welcome emails and optionally on additional external pages such as social media.Optional: if you have SkioSMS enabled, you may want to consider disabling the option to for customers to cancel via SMS. The simple reason is to avoid making it too easy for customers to cancel as the option to cancel is already available within the customer portal.
If you have a customer service team who will process cancellations for customers, we recommend having them use the "other" reason to input the reason the customer is cancelling. They could indicate something along the lines of "Cancelled by CX - Customer didn't realize they'’ve signed up for a subscription"

Actions Currently Available:

Skip Next Order
Change Next Order Date
Edit Shipping Frequency
Swap Products
Offer Discount

Generic Cancellation Reasons

I have too much product
Rebuttal 1
Message: Did you know you can skip your order?
Conditions: N/A
Recommended action: Skip
I didn't like the taste/flavor
Rebuttal 1
Message: Would you like to try another product?
Conditions: N/A
Recommended action: Swap
Product is too expensive
Rebuttal 1
Message: Would you like a discount?
Conditions: N/A
Recommended action: Discount
*explained in the conditional cancel flow section further below
I receive my product(s) too often
Rebuttal 1
Message: Would you like to change the order frequency?
Conditions: N/A
Recommended action: Change delivery frequency
Taking a break
Rebuttal 1
Message: Would you like to change the order frequency?
Conditions: N/A
Recommended action: Change next order date
Other
The "other" options is designed to allow the user (or customer service rep processing the cancellation) to input the reason for which the customer is cancelling in an empty field.

Additional Cancellation Reasons For Inspiration

I had an issue with my delivery
Consider asking the customer reach out to your customer service team. You could insert your customer service phone number or contact email in the rebuttal.
I found the same product at a competitor for cheaper
Consider offering a discount or asking the customer to reach out to your customer service team for a special discount. (This could be a great way to collect info about your competitors from your customers)
I am not seeing the value in this product
Consider speaking to your product value proposition and highlighting quality factors.
For e.g: you could indicate that your product is made with high quality ingredients and that it'’s ethically sourced.
I’m a bit tight on funds right now
Consider offering a discount. You could leverage conditions to offer various discount tiers so that you're giving the right discount amount to subscribers based on the amount of cycles they completed.
I wanted a one-time purchase
This reason is pretty self-explanatory. If customers are accidentally subscribing instead of making one-time purchases, this could warrant a design review for your product page.
My order was not shipped to me fast enough
Consider offering to make things right by offering a discount.
I no longer use this product
Consider offering the customer to try another product and set up the an action for a product swap
I found a different product that better suits my needs
If you notice an increase of customers selecting this cancellation reason, it might be worth sending our product surveys or asking for a net promotor score within the customer journey for your store so you can learn on where the product can improve.

Conditions

Condition options

Condition	Explanation
Number of Cycles Completed	How many orders has the customer completed. A higher number means they have been a part of your subscription program longer. Customers with a higher cycles completed have a naturally higher LTV and might have already captured enough to cover the cost of acquisition for them.
Subscription Dollar Amount	The dollar value per interval that the customer spends on their subscription. Higher dollar value subscriptions may have a higher possible discount allowed and losing these customers might have a greater impact.
Subscription Creation Date	The initial date the customer started their subscription. This can be used to separate subscribers based on changes to the program that you have made that might still be grandfathered. IE if they had a historical low rate that newer subscribers do not have or if you have a program that changes the tier of memberships or offers greater rewards for time spent.
Subscription was Migrated	If the migration was created before or after any migration from another subscription platform to Skio. This can be used if historically on other platforms those customers have a historical low rate that post subscription customers do not have.
Subscription Type	Whether the subscription is a standard subscribe and save where the customer pays with each interval or if the subscription is a prepaid where the customer pays for several intervals up front. If you have both types of programs it allows you to offer different options.

Not Sure Where to Start?

Skio's conditional cancel flow conditions can alter the recommended action and message for 2 different use cases (both can be applied on the same cancellation reason):

Split testing: If two treatments have the same conditions with different recommended actions, Skio will randomly split the subscriptions that click that cancellation reason into two cohorts for true split testing; use the new analytics dashboard to compare the result of this split test
Targeting subscriptions based on certain conditions: If conditions are setup, subscriptions that meet the conditions for that treatment will be offered that recommended action and message

Use these suggestions below to get started:

Cancel Reason: I have too much product
1. Treatment/Rebuttal 1
  Message: Did you know you can skip your order?
  Conditions: Cycles Completed = 1
  Recommended action: Skip
  Use Case: Perform a split test to see how skips perform over edit frequency (Treatment 2)
2. Treatment/Rebuttal 2
  Message: How about editing your frequency to something that matches your consumption? Feel free to use a customer interval if the frequency offered doesn't work for you
  Conditions: Cycles Completed = 1
  Recommended action: Edit frequency
  Use Case: Perform a split test to see how edit frequency performs over skips (Treatment 1)
3. Treatment/Rebuttal 3
  Message: Did you know you can skip your order?
  Conditions: Cycles Completed >= 2
  Recommended action: Skip
  Use Case: Perform a split test to see how skips perform over edit frequency (Treatment 2)
I didn't like the taste/flavor
Rebuttal 1
Message: Would you like to try another product?
Conditions: N/A
Recommended action: Swap product
Product is too expensive
1. Treatment/Rebuttal 1
  Message: How about a discount off your next order?
  Conditions: Subscription value < AOV (found in Performance Dashboard)
  Recommended action: 1-time discount
  Use Case: Test a 1-time discount compared to Treatment 2 (3 orders)
2. Treatment/Rebuttal 2
  Message: How about a discount off your next 3 orders?
  Conditions: Subscription value < AOV (found in Performance Dashboard)
  Recommended action: Discount off 3 orders (same discount as Treatment 1)
  Use Case: Test a discount for the next 3 orders compared to Treatment 1 (1 order)
3. Treatment/Rebuttal 3
  Message: How about a discount off your next order?
  Conditions: Subscription value > AOV (found in Performance Dashboard)
  Recommended action: 1-time discount (higher than Treatments 1 and 2)
  Use Case: Test a 1-time discount for subscribers whose order value is greater than your AOV (higher valued subscribers)
4. Treatment/Rebuttal 4
  Message: How about a discount off your next 3 orders?
  Conditions: Subscription value > AOV AND Cycles Completed >=3
  Recommended action: Discount off 3 orders
  Use Case: Test a discount for the next 3 orders for high-valued subscribers who have ordered at least 3 times
Taking a break
Rebuttal 1
Message: Would you like to change the order frequency?
Conditions: N/A
Recommended action: Change next order date
Other
The "other" options is designed to allow the user (or customer service rep processing the cancellation) to input the reason for which the customer is cancelling in an empty field.

Tutorial To Set Up Conditional Cancel Flow

Here is a tutorial video walking through how to set up a cancel flow with multiple conditions:

Use case: Offer various discounts depending on where the customer is at in the subscription life cycle.