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Pre-existing and they left because of tech/service issues. We interview all outgoing customers. And I agree our lack of preparedness to scale was part of this,

Pre-existing and they left because of tech/service issues. We interview all outgoing customers. And I agree our lack of preparedness to scale was part of this, but it's shortsighted to only look at a simple conversation rate for determining success. "Success" is relative and we define it on a higher level than just conversion. The fact is, software isn't infinitely scalable...or rather it takes orders of magnitude more resources for it to approach that level. There's a certain inflection point where the time spent "getting prepared" simply outweighs the potential benefits. We could have spent years "getting prepared" but there was a point where we just had to say "ship it"...and that's what we did.

encoderer 11y ago
Can you share your experience on getting this feedback during a cancelation? We have mixed success getting users to share. It's about 50/50 for us. We have even lower response rates from users who have finished their trial without conversion.
- Shpigford 11y ago
  At the crux of it is not allowing self-serve cancellation. I know, boo, hiss, burn us at the stake. ;) We wrote a little bit about that here: https://baremetrics.com/blog/how-we-reduced-churn https://baremetrics.com/blog/how-we-reduced-churn But ultimately we exchange at least a few emails with every cancellation and try to understand exactly why we were no longer addressing their need. 99% of people are extremely willing to help out here. Also, Exit Interviews: http://www.extendslogic.com/business/jobs-to-be-done-cancel-interviews/ http://www.extendslogic.com/business/jobs-to-be-done-cancel-...
  - encoderer 11y ago
    Thank you. We're on the same page wrt emailing us to cancel. A quarter of our churn is actually users who have their cc declined and do not fix it, despite nag emails, in two weeks. I don't think we've ever heard back from a single one of these users. For the other 75% I guess we should just be asking more questions before servicing their request.
    - mattm 11y ago
      For the cc declined customers, you may want to look into http://churnbuster.io/ http://churnbuster.io/
    - aculver 11y ago
      Hey, I used to run a SaaS product that solved the failed payment problem very specifically (http://churnbuster.io http://churnbuster.io) and I'd recommend you extend that 2 week period out to something like 4 to 6 weeks. Some of our most successful customers were sending out 7-8 emails over a 6 week period. Every business is different, so YMMV, but it might help. A bunch of other thoughts on the subject that may be helpful to you here: https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-industry-average-rates-for-involuntary-churn-on-credit-card-subscriptions https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-industry-average-rates-fo... .
    - Shpigford 11y ago
      While we're throwing out ways to solve CC declines with other solutions, Baremetrics actually has this very thing built in. :) https://baremetrics.com/dunning https://baremetrics.com/dunning
  - morgante 11y ago
    Big surprise: doing a scummy business practice straight out of the Comcast playbook helps you to hold on to users. Any service which lets me sign up online but not cancel online is incredibly distasteful.
    - tarr11 11y ago
      You can cancel online, just send an email. Comparing this to Comcast's service is hyperbole.
      - Silhouette 11y ago
        So can you cancel without being hassled excessively or not? The founder of the business just stated right up the thread there that there's no self-service cancellation and they always exchange a few e-mails with someone who is cancelling. Personally, I am usually happy to give feedback to fellow business folks, and I wouldn't be offended if someone politely asked for it from a service I was cancelling. However, if a single reasonable action to cancel and no further contact resulted in my card being charged because I didn't play along, that service should not expect a happy outcome.
        Shpigford 11y ago
        We don't hassle. You send an email saying "Hey, I want to cancel!" We respond with: "Bummer to hear, but happy to take care of that for you. Anything we could have done better?" Then that usually sparks a longer conversation, but if we don't hear back within 24-48 hours, we just go ahead with the cancellation. We're also very generous with refunds and certainly wouldn't keep someone's money just because we delayed the cancellation a day or two. That's just silly.
        Silhouette 11y ago
        That all seems pretty reasonable to me, then.
  - Shpigford 11y ago
    @morgante Big surprise: Someone who's never tried it from a business perspective complains about it on Hacker News. :)

encoderer 11y ago

Can you share your experience on getting this feedback during a cancelation? We have mixed success getting users to share. It's about 50/50 for us. We have even lower response rates from users who have finished their trial without conversion.

Shpigford 11y ago
At the crux of it is not allowing self-serve cancellation. I know, boo, hiss, burn us at the stake. ;) We wrote a little bit about that here: https://baremetrics.com/blog/how-we-reduced-churn https://baremetrics.com/blog/how-we-reduced-churn But ultimately we exchange at least a few emails with every cancellation and try to understand exactly why we were no longer addressing their need. 99% of people are extremely willing to help out here. Also, Exit Interviews: http://www.extendslogic.com/business/jobs-to-be-done-cancel-interviews/ http://www.extendslogic.com/business/jobs-to-be-done-cancel-...
- encoderer 11y ago
  Thank you. We're on the same page wrt emailing us to cancel. A quarter of our churn is actually users who have their cc declined and do not fix it, despite nag emails, in two weeks. I don't think we've ever heard back from a single one of these users. For the other 75% I guess we should just be asking more questions before servicing their request.
  - mattm 11y ago
    For the cc declined customers, you may want to look into http://churnbuster.io/ http://churnbuster.io/
  - aculver 11y ago
    Hey, I used to run a SaaS product that solved the failed payment problem very specifically (http://churnbuster.io http://churnbuster.io) and I'd recommend you extend that 2 week period out to something like 4 to 6 weeks. Some of our most successful customers were sending out 7-8 emails over a 6 week period. Every business is different, so YMMV, but it might help. A bunch of other thoughts on the subject that may be helpful to you here: https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-industry-average-rates-for-involuntary-churn-on-credit-card-subscriptions https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-industry-average-rates-fo... .
  - Shpigford 11y ago
    While we're throwing out ways to solve CC declines with other solutions, Baremetrics actually has this very thing built in. :) https://baremetrics.com/dunning https://baremetrics.com/dunning
- morgante 11y ago
  Big surprise: doing a scummy business practice straight out of the Comcast playbook helps you to hold on to users. Any service which lets me sign up online but not cancel online is incredibly distasteful.
  - tarr11 11y ago
    You can cancel online, just send an email. Comparing this to Comcast's service is hyperbole.
    - Silhouette 11y ago
      So can you cancel without being hassled excessively or not? The founder of the business just stated right up the thread there that there's no self-service cancellation and they always exchange a few e-mails with someone who is cancelling. Personally, I am usually happy to give feedback to fellow business folks, and I wouldn't be offended if someone politely asked for it from a service I was cancelling. However, if a single reasonable action to cancel and no further contact resulted in my card being charged because I didn't play along, that service should not expect a happy outcome.
      - Shpigford 11y ago
        We don't hassle. You send an email saying "Hey, I want to cancel!" We respond with: "Bummer to hear, but happy to take care of that for you. Anything we could have done better?" Then that usually sparks a longer conversation, but if we don't hear back within 24-48 hours, we just go ahead with the cancellation. We're also very generous with refunds and certainly wouldn't keep someone's money just because we delayed the cancellation a day or two. That's just silly.
        Silhouette 11y ago
        That all seems pretty reasonable to me, then.
- Shpigford 11y ago
  @morgante Big surprise: Someone who's never tried it from a business perspective complains about it on Hacker News. :)