The Netflix cancellation process is one most of us are familiar with, and that has been visibility evolving. With the recent price increases and a very high number of returning customers, Netflix stopped offering incentives to stay a long time ago.
The focus shifted towards reminding users of the value of the product and sending timed reminders.
1. Confirmation
Upon your first attempt to cancel your Netflix account, this is what you see:
Instead of offering incentives, the process will suggest you cheaper way to stick around: downgrading your plan. You also get one last chance to subscribe to the mailing list and stay up to date with future releases. This is an excellent addition to the process of a confident product which knows that users could easily return in the future when new attractive content is released.
2. Survey
Unlike most products, like the customizable Tenstars survey, Netflix only includes the exit survey after the Netflix subscription cancellation has been confirmed.
At this point, there's a new hint that Netflix not only wants you back but they expect you: "and hope you'll be back soon".
2. Remaining of the billing period
Even though in appearance, Netflix is happy to let you go, they make it really easy for you to change your mind. The account can be restored at any time from either your account page or the frequent reminders by email and banners you'll see through your last month.
Review
Netflix is one of the kings of the subscription model and their team clearly knows what they are doing. They have a tremendous volume of user data and the analytics tools to review it. The old strategy of a free month or other incentives is no longer the best course of action.
These are the four strong points on the current process:
- Help the user to stay: Offer alternatives within the regular product pricing model.
- Remind remind remind: Make it very easy for the user to change their mind over the last billing period.
- Flex on a strong value: Notify users about new releases through the last billing period and ever after. An organized release calendar together with the strong customization algorithms helps Netflix tease their cancelling users with the right upcoming content.
- Never stop surveying: Feedback is the single most important tool to know your user. The last three points have only been implemented because Netflix knows their users. The most direct way to know what your users want is, not surprisingly, asking them. Although Netflix has a strong marketing team and collects a humongous amount of your data, they never stopped asking.
Our takeaways
At Tenstars we are all about innovation and helping our customers customize their retention to fit their unique circumstances. The retention flow is never static and must be reviewed frequently to match your current moment. That's why we bet strongly on a customizable cancel survey and analytics.
We want to give you the data to inspire and back up your decisions and our redesigned analytics dashboard targets exactly that.
Related articles:
A great example of a Dynamic Exit Survey, DashThis
How to ship a great metrics dashboard for SaaS (Part I)
