Scope
What is Chargebee Retention used case?
What is the scenario Chargebee Retention helps our business revenue?
Summary
Chargebee Retention offers different use cases, like downgrades and expired trials. It not only helps to save customers and get insights from those who cancel but also helps with overall compression and conversion. Acquisition issues often moonlight as churn, as the reasons customers leave are often the same reasons they fail to buy in the first place.
Solution
I. Using Chargebee Retention for Downgrades
Got a few different plans or pricing options for your customers to choose from? Use a Chargebee Retention Page! We have a few tips for expanding Chargebee Retention to your downgrade use case.
Downgrade Loss Aversion Cards
Different Loss Aversion Cards can be more effective and make more sense for the downgrade use case. Here are some tips on how to make your Loss Aversion Cards more downgrade friendly.
Feature Cards
Show customers the great features they will lose when they downgrade that aren't on the lower-priced plan. It's possible they are using and getting value out of at least one of the features and didn't realize it would be gone when they downgrade.
Offer Cards
Often times customers downgrade because they don't see the value of the additional features. Use an offer in the Loss Aversion Cards to Offer a free training session to show them the value of a screen share, or present a video tour of the feature benefits.
Downgrade Survey Options
The Reasons customers downgrade don't typically match the Reasons customers cancel. Capture these nuances by using different Reasons in your exit survey.
Customer experience
You should always have an opportunity for a customer to voice concerns about your customer experience: support or success, but this is especially true if your higher-tiered plans offer premium support as a feature.
Value vs. Cost
'It's too expensive for the value' is a popular reason customers downgrade. Keep them around momentarily with a discount, and let that signal to your customer success teams those customers could benefit from a little extra in learning how the features on the plan could work for them.
Out of budget
Out-of-budget is a different pricing-related Reason than value, and therefore should be measured and treated differently. If these customers find value but don't quite have the funds, you can help them out with a discount, add-ons, or alert them of savings from annual payments.
Not using features
Measuring how frequently customers downgrade from not using features could cue your team to up your enablement, success, and customer marketing efforts. Make sure your customers know the value of all the features on their new plan!
Downgrade Offer Strategy
Similar to Loss Aversion Cards, the Offers you present should reflect Offers relevant to downgrades. Below are some popular examples among Chargebee Retention customers.
Free coaching sessions
Sometimes folks downgrade because they just don't know how to use some of the features on their plan. Offer free coaching sessions to ensure your customers get the most value out of their plans.
Engage with your Team
If it's a customer support issue, give customers a chance to connect! There's often no better value than simply listening to your customers, regardless of if they cancel or downgrade.
Discounts
Meet your customer halfway! Discounts are always a popular way to keep a customer around, and keeping them on a higher-tier plan is no exception. Maybe they don't find it worth the full price point, but still, believe it's valuable enough to pay a little more for the extra features.
Add-ons or ala carte feature options
Have any of your Plan features available ala carte? If a large number of your customers choose to upgrade only because of one or two features, it's harder to justify the higher price point. Offer ala carte add-ons for particular cases where customers only want one feature on a higher tier plan. You can offer to turn this one feature on for an "add-on" price, and still keep some extra revenue coming in, making the customer happy as well.
II. Using Chargebee Retention for Expired Trials
There are two ways to handle trials for subscription:
- Credit Card Trials: If you take a credit card during signup your customer has to cancel to stop from being charged.
- Non-Credit Card Trials: If you don't take a credit card during signup
How you implement Chargebee Retention will depend on which strategy you use for trial signups, so head to the correct section based on your current strategy!
Credit Card Trials
If your customer presses "Cancel" while on a free trial, we can redirect them to a Chargebee Retention Page the same way we would for a cancel.
Non-Credit Card Trials
Trials that don't take a credit card during sign-up don't get the most benefit from using Chargebee Retention on trials, since there's not a hard "cancel" button the customer needs to press, but it is still possible. Here are a couple of ideas:
Take a Credit Card for extensions
It's no secret that locking a card with a credit card capture can drastically decrease your trial sign-ups. Keep your sign-up easy and breezy by locking extensions with Credit Cards. By then, folks are bought in, but will still need to cancel to end their trial.
Send it over email
While email Exit Surveys aren't nearly as effective as ones presented in the app (only 2% of customers typically fill them out!) if you're getting value from Chargebee Retention in other ways, adding this to your Chargebee Retention buffet can only help, and still can reduce labor on support, provide insights, and keep a few more trials active to boot!
Trial Loss Aversion Cards
When someone is just getting started, they may not have had a chance to explore or think things through! Use Loss Aversion cards to deliver the important stuff, any extra information they may have easily missed along the way.
Social proof
Nothing helps tip the confidence scales in your favor more than a little social proof! Show your customers how great customers (just like them!) get value out of your product with links to Tweets from happy customers or case studies.
Product Tours
Maybe your customer just didn't find what they were looking for! Show them around the place with a Product Tour using our Video Loss Aversion Card.
Offer Cards
Offer cards work really well as Loss Aversion Cards, and using them to keep trials hooked is no exception. Use Offers to suggest setup help, trial extensions, or time-limited discounts.
Trial Survey Options
Trial survey options don't need to vary too greatly from the Reasons people Cancel, but there are still some things you'll definitely want to ask.
Missing Features or Integrations
While customers can leave at any part of their journey based on needed features, this survey reason is never more true than it is in trials. Be sure to collect what customers' dealbreaker features are, the ones that keep them from buying your tool, to inform the roadmap if it makes sense for the scope of your product, or assess the market you're reaching with marketing if it doesn't.
Never got set up or onboarded
The number one saveable reason we see for why customers cancel is a failure to get properly onboarded in the first place. Tracking this will help you extend a helping hand to get folks back on the right track.
Price
Especially helpful when you do pricing experiments, monitoring Price as a survey option can signal when you've gone too far while testing. You'll always likely have a steady percentage of folks failing to adopt based on price, and that's normal! Seeing spikes is where you'll want to assess and adjust.
I'm going to a competitor
Customers can leave you for a competitor at any time. For existing customers, it may mean they have scaled out of your product, or their needs have changed. Tracking who you're losing evaluators to can indicate who your stiffest competition is for making a claim to your market.
Didn't have time
This is a big one for trials (and an easy group to win over). Find out whose interest is still in the game, but may not have the bandwidth, and help them find their way.
Trial Offer Strategy
Your Trial Offer strategy is less about winning them back, and more about making it easy for them to stay. Getting them training and more time on trial can work wonders without giving away discounts.
Extensions
Sometimes, all you need is a little more time. Getting caught up in a whirlwind of tasks can prevent folks from truly testing out your product or service. Give them a little more time to figure it out, especially if they haven't even gotten started yet.
Free Setup help
It would be nice if all of our customers were DIY geniuses that could figure anything out on their own, but that's simply not the case. If they can't get started themselves, guide them through by offering a helping hand. It may be all they need to stick around.
Feature Feedback
If your customers leave due to missing features, there's likely not much you can do to keep them around. You can learn what's the dealbreaker, though! Prompt our Email Offer to collect feedback on what they're missing and send that email to your support or success teams. If it's something you have, you can reach out (or use their contact to win them back when the feature is released!)
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