Cancellation flow: how to balance usability and business
Creating a cancellation flow can be simple, or quite complex. It depends mainly on your company’s guidelines, on the product or the service you are dealing with, and on whether or not you can suggest alternatives that make this process friendlier for the user, while soothing the harm for the company. By understating the context and the possibilities among which you can work, it gets easier to draw your client’s profile, establish possible routes, and find viable and interesting solutions for both parties.
This is indeed a tricky task, especially if the company practices client retention — which is very common in telecommunications, banks, etc. The need for creating this “barrier” throughout the cancellation process puts us in a hard situation, where we have to create the best experience, while considering this limitation.
In telephone service channels, there are lots of exhausting, and repetitive steps that take an extreme amount of time to confirm personal data, and other pieces of information. In apps or websites, however, this flow can be less exhausting — though retention might be needed –, and it can also positively transform the client’s opinion on your brand.
When it comes to a more complex scenario, I believe we should highlight some details that might make a difference during the construction of one of these flows. Here I assume a text perspective, while also thinking of the user’s experience in general.
These analyses were collected after several studies on URA flows, benchmarking, clients’ opinion, among other topics. They were applied to a project of cancellation flow, which is still ongoing, developed by my coworker, Accenture’s amazing UX Designer, Cami Corrêa ❤. I hope these results help you in future projects.
1. Allow for the user to find the cancellation option
First, it’s important that the users can find this option in the website or app. Obviously, it must not be prioritized hierarchically. Still, it must be easy to locate. After all, even if the users cannot find it, it doesn’t mean they will give up on cancelling; it only means that:
- They will call costumer support;
- They will complain on social media, app store, or other channels, creating a bad impression on your brand;
- You are not being honest with the users, which is unfair, to say the least.
So your focus should be on offering this option to the users, and allowing for them to find it. We must understand this: if somebody wants to cancel a product, they will find a way, and do it. The point is to figure out how to keep them with you — but this you will try to solve later, during the process.
2. Understand the reason why
Several factors can influence on the users’ decision for cancelling: the product’s quality, higher prices, spending cuts, choosing another company that offers the same thing with better cost-benefit ratio, among others.
It’s essential to understand which the user’s motivations are when they decide to cancel — not only for thinking of a strategy and trying to make them change their minds, but also for observing where your company is making mistakes.
Therefore, you should ask the reasons why the user is cancelling, and ask for them to evaluate your product. You can preset the most obvious answers, but it also nice to let an open box so that the user can talk more about their experience, and comment on the problem in a rather detailed manner.
It might be redundant to say so, but try your best to simplify your text during the cancellation flow. The user’s journey through the completion of this task is not so easy, and will certainly create some discomfort. Therefore, you should think of a friendly, straight-forward text.
3. Establish profiles
For you to understand the reach and boundaries of your actions, it’s important to know who is cancelling. By listing the users’ profiles, it gets easier to identify how likely they are to stay with you, what is or isn’t viable in each case, and how to plan directed strategies.
For example, there are clients who are so unsatisfied that they won’t continue to use your product, regardless of what you say or offer. In this case, it may be wiser to guarantee an easy way out, than to insist and end up creating further nuisance. On the other hand, in other cases — such as when clients cancel for financial issues –, you might be able to keep them with you by offering better prices or extra benefits.
4. Play a fair game, and regain the user’s trust
When it comes to customer service, one of the advantages of digital experience is that we can foresee the user’s actions, and keep them within some control. Traditional cancellation methods are based on exhausting processes of repetitive steps, transferring from one section to another, which ultimately beat the client up due to them feeling tired and angry. Unlike these methods, digital experience allows us to develop new strategies to make everything feel more honest. It’s important to present options in a clear manner, and to let information on fines and taxes well defined in the interface, by informing values and what is going to happen in each cancellation context.
It makes no sense to lead the user into hating your company. You must convince them into continuing with the service by other means, so that they can feel benefited — not forced into being there. It’s possible to identify the most critical moments when the process gets tiring, and thus to offer certain times for “relief” throughout the process; then, the user might feel rewarded somehow. There are lots of ways for you to do this: a special offer, a bonus, a simple note telling the users that they will finish their request quite soon. Within your range of possible actions, analyze a way of making everything less uncomfortable, and creating fewer damages.
Being humble and apologizing for your mistake is the perfect beginning for retrieving your client’s trust. By doing this, you suggest that your company is willing to improve. As in any trade, keeping an honest dialogue, apologizing, showing that you care, and offering help are essential for constructing a healthy relationship. So earn that vote of confidence.
- Speak an accessible, friendly language;
- Offer special advantages;
- Assess the relevance of offering discounts — with different degrees of aggressiveness — during the flow;
- Remind the user of every benefit of your product.
Remember: if the user feels safe, and if they trust in your company, it’s quite likely that they will come back; so make a good impression.
