I just had an interesting experience during the cancelation of my membership on Audible. I was subscribed to their AudibleListener Gold plan to pay $15 a month and with that I was getting one credit every month. For each credit you can buy an audio book or if you want more you have to pay the actual cost of the book.

Now recently I don’t listen to audiobooks too much and I have a backlog of books I still want to listen to so I didn’t feel like paying $15 a month. Not too much but 1 audiobook each month is definitely more than I need now. First I though I was going to click three times and be done with it but then I was absolutely amazed by the great user experience Audible has prepared for me as a person who wants to cease sending them money every month. It’s all pretty basic stuff but very nicely done.

Step 1: Credits remaining

When I actually clicked on “cancel my membership” they told me right away that I still had three credits remaining and that when I cancel the membership, they will be deleted from my account and that I better use them before I cancel. Great way of doing something nice for a leaving customer in order to try to make him stay! It made me actually curious what canceling of their membership does. I went to their help center and searched for “cancel” and found that my current audio library will still be accessible and playable, I’ll just loose the remaining credits. Good. Now I all needed to do is to go to my Wish List and use the remaning credits on something reasonable (I purchased missing units of Pimsleur’s Spanish Phase 1).

Step 2: A Gift

After downloading the Spanish audiobooks I was ready again to go to my account to finally cancel it. Then I got a surprise again. After I filled in the reason why I’m canceling - they do this in a nice unobtrusive way - just a small combo box - I was offered a $20 coupon to not cancel. And here I am, totally convinced that I want to cancel, and I’m staring at this screen not sure what to do :)

Step 3: Put Account On Hold

I of course finally decided to cancel my membership. But before I did, I took the above screenshot and decided to start writing this blog post because it was getting to be fun. Then, as a mistake, I clicked on Accept Offer instead of Continue Canceling because it’s the button that attracts more attention and looks like a confirm button. Hahaha, they got me. Nicely done. Anyway, since I was already decided to cancel, I went ahead to actually cancel my membership and in the Reason combo box I noticed something more appropriate for me: “I’m getting more credits than I can use”. That’s more appropriate because it’s actually the situation I’m having. I don’t mind paying something time to time and to get credits but I’m simply getting more of those than I can use. So after I clicked on that I got this another screen:

After which I finally decided to ……. put the account on hold of course! :)

Lessons Learned

If you happen to have a website with subscriptions:

• It’s totally fine to wipe out credits from a canceling subscriber’s account as long as you explain properly and in advance what will happen and as long as you encourage the user to use the credits before they actually cancel
• It’s a good idea to offer gifts to people trying to leave. It’s a very good idea especially in the case they are paying you a recurring fee and that the gift actually has lower value than you will loose quickly anyway if they cancel. This seems to be a common sense but actually not many websites do this at all or right. Including ours :)
• It’s a very good idea to ask them for the reason of leaving and customizing the next screen based on their reply.
• Offer a temporary suspension of the account (that gets reinstated automatically after a certain period of time) instead of terminal cancelation. In this case you are satisfying their demand (they want to stop paying) without loosing them forever. You don’t have to do anything to make them go back soon.

What are other good ways to persuade your customers to not leave? Have you seen any good examples or are you actually using them on your service? Share the thoughts in the comments.