How to build a Cancellation Prevention flow

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

This guide explains how to set up a Cancellation Prevention flow.

Before you start

See Getting started with Cancellation Prevention for a list of key features and use cases.

How it works

Use Recharge’s Cancellation Prevention feature to build an automated cancellation process, allowing you to gather customer cancellation insights and provide customers with incentives to prevent them from churning.

You can offer incentives such as discounts, delays, swaps, and products with quantity upsell plans to encourage customers to stay subscribed.

You can view the cancellation flow a customer entered and its status on the Customer Details page under Customer Flows. The status shows as either completed, cancelled, or in progress, depending on the action the customer took in the flow:

• Completed: The customer either accepted an offer and was saved or completed the cancellation process
• Cancelled: The customer abandoned the flow before accepting an offer or completing cancellation
• In progress: The customer is still in the flow and hasn’t yet accepted, declined, or cancelled

Step 1 - Select the Cancellation Prevention template

Choose the Cancellation Prevention template in the Recharge merchant portal:

1. Click Churn tools in the merchant portal and select Cancellation Prevention.
2. Click Create from template and choose one of the following templates:
   • Basic cancellation experience: Gather customer feedback on why they want to cancel without offering incentives to retain their subscription.
   • Basic cancellation experience with suggested offers: Provide tailored incentives based on customers' specific cancellation reasons to encourage them to continue their subscriptions.
   • A/B test cancellation experience: Build two flows to gather data-driven insights and determine the most effective cancellation flow.
   • A/B test cancellation experience with suggested offers: Build two flows that offer different incentives to understand what motivates customers to stay subscribed.
   • Cancellation experience with rewards reminders: Remind customers about any unused rewards they will lose if they cancel their subscription.
   • Cancellation experience with rewards reminders and suggested offers: Provide customers with offers to prevent them from cancelling, and remind them of any unused rewards they may lose if they cancel.
3. Click Get started to open the template.

Cancellation Prevention flows trigger automatically when customers start the cancellation process.

Step 2 - Add a Deflection Page (optional)

Add a Deflection Page to present customers with retention options before they reach the cancellation survey. This page creates a moment of pause before cancellation, helping reinforce the value of a subscription by showcasing benefits and reminding customers why staying subscribed matters.

To add a Deflection Page page:

1. Drag the Deflection Page node onto the canvas and place it directly before the cancellation survey node.
2. Click the node.
3. Select an Offer to display.
4. Optional - Click Customize landing page to design the Deflection Page and align it with your brand.
5. Save your changes.

If a customer accepts the offer, they bypass the cancellation survey and remain subscribed. Customers who continue past the Deflection Page will proceed to the cancellation survey and any configured incentives. Make sure your cancellation survey and offers are set up to support your retention strategy.

Step 3 - Review the cancellation survey node

Click the cancellation survey node to review the standard configuration for the cancellation survey answers and any applicable incentives.

Click the pencil icon to edit the incentive attached to a specific survey response to update the offer, or click the trash can icon to delete the survey answer. See Offer types for more information.

The cancellation node differs depending on the type of flow you’re building:

Optional - Add gaming prevention

Set a time limit on monetary offers to prevent customers from repeatedly claiming incentives in your Cancellation Prevention flows. If a customer has already claimed a monetary offer within the specified time frame, the fallback offer defaults to skipping their next upcoming order.

Use the Gaming prevention field to enter a time limit and control how often customers can receive monetary offers.

Optional - Add a custom answer

Click Add an answer on the cancellation survey node to add a Custom answer and set an offer for your custom response.

Optional - Copy and paste the Cancellation survey node

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 update the Cancellation Prevention template.

Step 4 - Build the onsite experience

Customers see a specific page when they attempt to cancel their subscription, which displays the answers to the cancellation survey and any available incentives. Recharge provides an easy-to-use Site Builder so you can control how your offer page looks, plus customize content to fit your brand.

Select Customize landing page on the cancellation node to navigate to the Site Builder.

Step 5 - Save and activate the flow

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

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

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:

Contact customer support: Direct customers to your support team by linking to your support page. You can customize the button text and include your support email if preferred.

Delay and change frequency: Allow customers to postpone their next charge and update how often their subscriptions are delivered.

Delay (pause): Allow customers to delay their upcoming order by assigned intervals (days, weeks, months).

Discount: Provide a one-time percentage discount on the customer’s upcoming order.

Discount code: Search your store’s discount codes to present to the customer. This response can be used to offer multi-order discounts.

Free gift: Provide a free gift offer to retain customers by adding value to their subscriptions, increasing product awareness, and creating opportunities for future upsells or cross-sells. Free gifts are sent to customers with their next order.

No offer: An offer is not provided when the customer selects this cancellation option.

Skip: Allow customers to skip their upcoming order.

Swap: Allow customers to exchange their current product for another. You can limit swap options to specific collections, allow swaps to a different variant of the same product, or allow swaps to any product. If a customer attempts to swap to a product that is not offered on the original subscribed product, Recharge displays the one-time price of that product on the product selection page. Once the customer selects a frequency, Recharge updates the pricing to reflect the corresponding subscription. Swap offers can also include products with quantity upsell plans.

Swap to a specific product: Pre-select a specific product to offer as a swap. This allows you to direct customers to a designated alternative product.

Swap and discount: Offer customers the ability to swap their product and receive a one-time percentage discount on their upcoming order.

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 cancel their subscription after being shown 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.

One-click subscription cancellation

When customers use one-click cancellation, they bypass the Cancellation Prevention flow, including the cancellation survey and any incentives configured in your strategy.

To enable this setting:

1. Click Storefront in your Recharge merchant portal.

2. Select Customer portal.

3. Navigate to the Cancellation and retention section.

4. Enable Allow customers to one-click subscription cancellation.

5. Click Edit one-click cancellation regions. 

6. Select the countries, states, provinces, or regions where you want to offer one-click cancellation. 

7. Click Apply. 

8. Click Save.

Customers with a shipping address in one of the selected regions will see the one-click cancellation experience and bypass your Cancellation Prevention strategy. Customers outside the selected regions will continue to see your configured cancellation prevention offers.

Colorado is selected by default because Colorado law requires a one-click cancellation option for eligible customers.

Edit a Cancellation Prevention flow

Edit the flow directly on the flow canvas in your Recharge merchant portal:

1. From the merchant portal, navigate to Churn tools select Cancellation Prevention.
2. Open the active flow you want to edit.
3. Click Edit in the top navigation bar. 
4. Make your changes to the flow. You can modify existing nodes or add and remove nodes from the canvas. 
5. When you're done, click Save in the top navigation bar. 

Considerations

Consider the following when building Cancellation Prevention flows:

Frequently asked questions