Cancellation Prevention allows you to create unique win back and churn mitigation strategies to prevent customer churn. 

This guide covers an overview of the Cancellation Prevention template, recovery strategies you can utilize, configuration instructions, and analytic information to get insight into the experience's performance.

Before you start

• Cancellation Prevention is available to merchants on the Pro or Custom plans. Schedule a set-up call with Recharge to get started or contact your Account Manager directly. 
  • You can upgrade to Recharge Pro if you are on the Standard plan and want to use the Cancellation Prevention Subscription Experience. Set up an upgrade call with Recharge to discuss the Recharge Pro plan and its benefits. 
• See Understanding streak count for more details about streak count for subscription orders.

Key features

The Cancellation Prevention template allows you to test which strategies decrease churn and increase retention or LTV. A/B test churn options configured to determine the most effective incentives. Review the Cancellation Prevention analytics to understand customer feedback and improve customer churn with accurate customer insights.  

Cancellation prevention ensures that you:

• Survey customers' reasons for canceling subscriptions
• Provide customers a rebuttal to their cancellation reason with a customized and targeted incentive offering
• Uncover the optimal survey strategy with high-level performance reports

Configure Cancellation Prevention

Build your Cancellation Prevention Subscription Experience in the Recharge merchant portal. Activating a Cancellation Prevention Subscription Experience removes your store's existing retention strategies. You can only enable one Cancellation Prevention experience at a time.

Use the flow canvas to create a Cancellation Prevention Subscription Experience:

Step 1 - Create your experience

1. Click Retain in the merchant portal and select Cancellation prevention. 
2. Click Create from template and select Get started!
3. The Trigger is automatically set to Customer starts cancellation process.
   

Step 2 - Review the prebuilt template

Recharge provides a prebuilt Cancellation Prevention template optimized to maximize customer retention. The template uses the conditional branch node to display different cancellation prevention strategies depending on the customer’s streak count.

For example, you might want to incentivize customers who try to cancel saying the product is too expensive after their second order with a 10% discount on their next order while providing customers who try to cancel for the same reason after their fifth order with a 50% discount.

You can delete a streak through the Conditional branch node, and remove the streak branch from the template:

1. Click on the Conditional Branch node.
2. Click the Trash can icon beside the streak you wish to delete.
3. Click Apply.

Step 3 - Build your experience

Set up cancellation prevention strategies depending on the streak count and cancellation reason using the Cancellation survey node:

1. Click on the Cancellation survey node to configure your exit survey. 
2. Click the pencil icon next to an existing answer to make changes, or click + Add an answer to create a new option.
   
3. Click the dropdown under Offer for survey answer to add an offer to your cancellation reason. See Offer types for more information.
   
   • As an example, if you choose to edit the response This is too expensive, you can add a discount offer from the dropdown and offer an additional 20% off to prevent customers from churning. 
4. Click Apply after configuring your survey answers. 
   • Use the shuffle survey answers for customers setting to help avoid bias where customers automatically select the first option shown to them. When this is selected, the response options will display in a different order each time.
5. Select Customize onsite experience to navigate to the Site Builder. Use the Site Builder to control how your offer page looks and customize content to fit your brand.

You can set up different strategies for each node, or copy the node configuration from one node and paste it into another.

Optional - Copy and paste the Cancellation survey node

The standard Recharge Cancellation Prevention template has ten branches for your customers depending on their streak count. To make it easier for you to implement the same strategies on different branches, you can apply the following actions to the Cancellation survey node:

• Copy this node’s configuration: Copy the node’s setup completely, including the cancellation reasons, any offers configured, and the site builder
• Apply this node’s configuration to all nodes of this type: Apply the node configuration to all other cancellation survey nodes in the template
• Paste copied node configuration: Paste the copied node configuration from one cancellation survey node to another on the template

Click on the vertical dot menu to access the actions and easily update the Cancellation Prevention template to best suit your business needs.

For example, you could use the Apply this node’s configuration to all nodes of this type action to keep the cancellation experience standard no matter the customer’s streak count.

Alternatively, you could use the Copy this node’s configuration and Paste copied node configuration actions to offer the same cancellation experiences for streaks 1-3. Simply modify the Cancellation survey node once for streak one, then copy and paste the configuration to the Cancellation survey node for streaks two and three.

Step 4 - Save and activate the experience

Save and activate the experience after confirming everything is configured correctly:

1. Click Save, then Confirm: save changes. 
2. Click Activate Flow when ready to go live with your experience.
3. Select Confirm: activate Flow.
4. Run through the cancellation steps in your customer portal to test the flow.

You can deactivate an experience at any time, but an experience cannot be edited once activated.

Cancellation reason insights

Recharge provides up to five AI-generated insights by cancellation reason or by product on the Cancellation prevention Insights page if you have over 50 cancellation reason notes in the past month. These AI-generated insights help you understand why customers cancel so that you can understand your business at a higher level and make impactful business decisions to reduce customer churn.

Navigate to your insights by clicking the Insights tab from the Cancellation prevention overview page. 

Use the filter to view insights based on a specific product or reason to analyze in detail why customers cancel.

How to utilize insights

The basic Cancellation Prevention template can be improved in several ways through different refinements. The following methods can be used to validate performance improvement strategies: 

• Iterate on the cancellation reasons: Update the default text to make the cancellation reasons more descriptive or add new reasons to understand your customers pain points. 
• Identify the best offers: Create offers that are reflected in the insights that highlight key customer pain points for a specific product or reason.

Offer types

There are several survey offer types for you to use when curating the Cancellation survey, allowing you to provide customers with multiple options to meet their unique needs.

Offer types include:

• No Offer: An offer is not provided when the customer selects this cancellation option. 
• Discount: Provides a one-time fixed price or percentage discount to the customer’s order. 
• Discount Code: Search your store’s discount codes to present to the customer. This response can be used to offer multi-order discounts. 
• Skip: Skips the customer’s subscription interval. 
• Swap: Allows customers to swap their current product for a different product, and limit available swap options to specific collections. Alternatively, you can let customers swap to a different variant of the same product. Contact your CSM to enable this feature if it's unavailable in your strategy settings.
  • Note that if your store doesn’t allow swaps and/or skips in the customer portal settings, any reasons configured with skip or swap offers are not displayed to the customer in the cancellation prevention survey.
• Delay (pause): Delays the customer’s order by assigned intervals (Days, Weeks, Months).
• Free gift: Provides a free gift offer to retain customers by adding value to their subscription, increasing product awareness, and creating opportunities for future upsells or cross-sells.

Combined offer types

Combining multiple offers can better address customer concerns and enhance retention efforts.

Currently, the following combined offer types are available:

• Delay and discount
• Delay and free gift
• Delay and swap

Fallback offers

Fallback offers are presented to customers who proceed to cancel their subscription, after being presented the first offer. Specify which offer to show first and if that offer is declined, choose which offer to show second. 

Click +Add a fallback offer after configuring your first offer to specify which offer will be shown if the first offer is declined.

For example, if a customer selects "I already have more than I need", you can provide an initial offer of delaying the subscription, and if the customer declines they will be shown a second offer to delay and receive a discount on the upcoming order. 

Cancellation Prevention with Rewards

If you've configured a Rewards template, you can build a Cancellation Prevention experience to maximize retention.

Incentivize customers to keep their subscriptions with different recovery strategies and reminders of free gifts and credits: 

1. After creating your Rewards experience, click Cancellation prevention under Retain in the merchant portal navigation menu. 
2. Click Create from template on the Cancellation prevention with Rewards banner to build your Cancellation Prevention with Rewards Subscription Experience. 
3. Click Get started to create the experience from Recharge's prebuilt template. This template includes different experiences depending on the customer's streak number. 
4. Click on each survey node to configure different recovery strategies for customers depending on where they're at in their subscription lifecycle.
   • For example, if you offer credits to your customers you can add a Credits balance section to display when a customer attempts to cancel. This helps to remind the customer that they could lose their credit balance if they cancel. 
5. Click Manage settings to update the template name, and add a description.
6. Click Save when finished. 
7. Click Activate Flow when ready to make the experience live for all customers. 

Use the Site Builder to create a custom cancellation page, highlighting any free gifts or credits a customer may lose if they cancel their subscription.

Customer experience

All standard customer portal themes redirect customers to a standalone landing page displaying the cancellation survey. 

The offer survey displays when a customer selects a cancellation reason.

In-app modal

A churn survey modal displays in the Affinity customer portal theme to allow customers to select their reason for canceling and possibly select their incentive to be retained.

The offer specific to the survey answer appears when a customer selects a cancellation reason.

Reports and analytics 

Deep dive your analytics in a Reports page that reveals comprehensive metrics associated with customer journeys in the cancellation experience. An Activity view allows you to review all customers that interacted with the Exit Survey and export the customer list.

To access your reports and analytics:

1. Click Retain in your merchant portal and select Cancellation Prevention. 
2. Under the Your flows section, click the Graph icon to access the performance overview for the specific flow.

Performance

Use the Performance tab to review the Reports page. Filter the data by date, product, and by survey (if you have multiple Cancellation Retention experiences or surveys created). 

Review data such as:

• The Save rate: Percentage of customers who accepted an offer, or who abandoned the exit survey without canceling
• Monthly recurring revenue (MRR) saved
• Exit survey responses
• Performance of offers

Activity

Select the Activity tab to navigate to the Activity view where you can review information about customers who interacted with the Exit Survey. 

Use the Activity view to review information such as:

• The email and customer ID for customers who cancelled
• The date each customer interacted with the Exit Survey 
• The customer's reason for canceling
• The strategy presented to them and the customer's resulting action

The Results column displays the result of the customer's experience participating in the Exit Survey:

• Saved: The customer selected a cancellation reason and claimed an offer (ie. they received a discount code or skipped their next subscription), or the customer selected the "keep subscription" button. 
• Abandoned: The customer accessed the exit survey, but closed it or left the page without taking any action. These customers didn't select a cancellation reason, or clicked the "keep subscription" button.
• Lost: The customer cancelled their subscription. 

Operational analytics

Operational analytics allow you to review in-line metrics such as the number of customers who entered the experience, number of emails sent, Average Order Value (AOV), and more. 

The complete subscription experience results are not displayed until all customers who enter the flow have their next charge processed or cancel their next charge. If a customer delays their charge, these metric results are delayed until the charge processes. For example, if the subscription frequency is monthly, metric results are delayed until the next charge processes in a month. 

To access your metrics: 

1. Select the experience you wish to view metrics for.
2. Click the bar graph icon at the top of the experience.
   
3. Metrics for each section are displayed under the card.
   
   • There may be a discrepancy between the 'Saved' and 'Lost' total compared to the total of 'Entered' customers. This is due to a temporary period of time where an experience is pending or in-progress. Eventually, if a survey is not completed, it is marked as 'abandoned' and results in a 'Saved' metric. 
4. Optionally, you can click the kabob menu and select Export exit survey data to export your data.
   

Gaming prevention 

Gaming prevention allows you to set time limits on monetary offers (discounts, discount-codes, and free gifts). If a customer has previously claimed a monetary offer within the specified time frame, they will be presented with a fallback offer, such as a skip instead. This prevents abuse without revealing the time limits to the customer, encouraging fairness and integrity in the cancellation prevention process.

If gaming prevention is enabled on your store, the setting is configured to a time limit of 365 days. In the future, you can define specific limits for each offer type. 

Considerations

Consider the following when building Cancellation Prevention strategies:

FAQs

Can a customer "skip" the cancellation survey?

Customer survey reasons are optional. By clicking the "Next" button, shoppers are able to skip the cancellation survey and go straight to cancelling. In addition, the label for the "Next" button is modifiable and can be updated by the merchant at any time. While we believe this functionality aligns with the FTC's Click to Cancel rule, Recharge does not provide legal advice to customers regarding regulatory compliance. If you have additional questions pertaining to regulatory compliance, we recommend that you seek legal counsel.

What does "No Response" mean in the Cancellation Prevention analytics?

When a customer is presented with an exit survey, they can take two actions that lead to the recording of "No Response".

In both cases, the subscription is counted as SAVED:

• The customer abandoned the survey by closing the tab, or never selecting an answer
• The customer clicked "Keep Subscription" instead of selecting a survey reason

What does a "Other reason" mean in the Cancellation Prevention analytics?

“Other reason” will appear in analytics when either of these scenarios occur:

• The customer clicked ‘next’ on the initial reasons page without selecting a reason and cancelled.
• The customer clicked the existing ‘Other reason’ survey reason and then cancelled.

How can I customize the Cancellation Prevention Subscription Experience?

Use Recharge's drag-and-drop Site Builder to customize survey questions, plus the layout and design of cancellation pages. Add custom HTML/CSS code to incorporate media and personalize the cancellation page. 

Can I use the swap feature in Cancellation Prevention to swap items within a bundle?

No, the swap feature in the Cancellation Prevention experience exclusively enables swapping to another bundle subscription and selecting new content. It does not support updating the contents of an existing subscription bundle. 

Why are the cancellation reasons available when I cancel a subscription via the merchant portal different from the cancellation reasons configured with the Cancellation Prevention Subscription Experience?

The cancellation reasons displayed in the merchant portal default to the legacy customer portal cancellation reasons, and will not automatically align with any new reasons configured in your Cancellation Prevention template. You can update the cancellation reasons available through the merchant portal through these steps:

1. Temporarily deactivate the Cancellation Prevention template.
2. Navigate to your customer portal settings and update the listed cancellation reasons to match your Cancellation Prevention template. 
3. Reactivate the cancellation prevention template.

Cancellations performed in the merchant portal are not reflected in the Cancellation Prevention analytics.