LEARN
Something Worth Sharing“I wanna quit the gym!” I have experienced several situations recently which I’ve found annoying, but also extremely fascinating - both of these involve subscription issues and my desire to get out of them. In the famous words of Chandler Bing (in an episode of Friends from 1997) “I wanna quit the gym” - something he repeatedly says with little effect. In the first of my personal examples, I was almost held to ransom on the phone to sign up to a ‘meal box’ subscription. My view was that I would immediately cancel once I’d had time to consider it. I thought I had done so, only to find myself being charged a week later. I then had to fight - over the phone - to not only get a refund but actually shut down the account I thought I’d already ‘quit’. The other instance was an App that you can only ‘quit’ by jumping through various hoops. My learn - or take away thought - is that in a world of increasing subscriptions, if you need to snare someone in the first instance and then keep them trapped by making it so difficult to get out, what does that say about your product or service? Do you want to force clients in to you and force them to stay despite the benefit to them, or have the confidence in yourself and your offer to attract and retain them by choice? When energy and focus is spent on making the very best client experience, it steers you away from the forced version. FYI, there are 4 well-recorded approaches for trapping clients: free trials, fake endorsements, get a gift and confusing interfaces (dark pattern design).
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