Coming from a SaaS background on the product design and development side of things, I think churn is something many companies have given up on successfully remedying within the product, or have sourced to other departments in the company to help solve the issue. While user interaction with Customer Success or Support is definitely necessary in many circumstances, from my perspective, this could help battle churn for a myriad of reasons which can be addressed and designed for a specific product or with a specific user type in mind without being too abrasive or causing major headaches for the user. Cool idea. Good luck!
Show HN: ProsperStack – Use Stripe to automatically prevent cancellations
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Re: Show HN: ProsperStack – Use Stripe to automatically prevent cancellations
#22This is a good idea. It seems like it would help eliminate a lot of the inherent guesswork in feature forecasting (as I've experienced it). "We have lost x amount in annual recurring revenue due to the absence of feature y..." It could also provide valuable insight into how well your product is serving different markets.
Re: Show HN: ProsperStack – Use Stripe to automatically prevent cancellations
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a customer i would LOVE to exploit this if it gets popular
Hah, we've definitely thought about that possibility. Fortunately we do have a few things in place to prevent the most obvious abuse cases, but we need to get popular first!
Ha! What would be the counter measures?
I am thinking someone on Reddit posting a trick to save money on your sub.
Re: Show HN: ProsperStack – Use Stripe to automatically prevent cancellations
#24Just let people cancel imo.
Agreed, I'm tired of cancellation pages filled with dark patterns, pleas upon pleas to not cancel, and forcing me to provide justification for my actions.
Re: Show HN: ProsperStack – Use Stripe to automatically prevent cancellations
#25Congrats on launching. Very interesting. Does it support localization / customizing the look&feel? I couldn't work out if it's something that runs directly on our site, or we need to redirect to yours... I think some more documentation/info before you sign up for a trial can help give better confidence about what's involved and how it actually works (although the homepage is awesome and explains the value proposition super well).
Like others, I'm a bit on the fence about the ethical aspects of it. Yes, there's a lot to say about giving real value, listening to customers, but it does start going down the path towards darker patterns like Amazon Prime (there's a looong way to go down that path, but still feels like a step there). I'm not trying to criticize, but just voice my personal feeling around adding friction to cancellation.
Re: Show HN: ProsperStack – Use Stripe to automatically prevent cancellations
#26Love the idea. Churn reduction is one of those unsexy parts of the funnel (much like cart abandonment) that has a huge ROI but is traditionally neglected because it's not as visible as top of funnel work. Of course, it's all part of the same flywheel, which is why tools like this are so valuable.
Re: Show HN: ProsperStack – Use Stripe to automatically prevent cancellations
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hah, we've definitely thought about that possibility. Fortunately we do have a few things in place to prevent the most obvious abuse cases, but we need to get popular first!
Ha! What would be the counter measures? I am thinking someone on Reddit posting a trick to save money on your sub.
Right now it's fairly basic: we recommend you offer a limited discount (for example, 30% off for three months) and by default a customer can only accept one offer for their lifetime. That would at least minimize most of the risk.
On the roadmap are plans to target offers based on segmented customer data (lifetime value, etc.) so even if you did try to follow a trick posted on Reddit, it might not work for you!
Re: Show HN: ProsperStack – Use Stripe to automatically prevent cancellations
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hah, we've definitely thought about that possibility. Fortunately we do have a few things in place to prevent the most obvious abuse cases, but we need to get popular first!
Ha! What would be the counter measures? I am thinking someone on Reddit posting a trick to save money on your sub.
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Re: Show HN: ProsperStack – Use Stripe to automatically prevent cancellations
#29Congrats on launching. Very interesting. Does it support localization / customizing the look&feel? I couldn't work out if it's something that runs directly on our site, or we need to redirect to yours... I think some more documentation/info before you sign up for a trial can help give better confidence about what's involved and how it actually works (although the homepage is awesome and explains the value proposition…
The customization is limited right now (you can add your company logo, and customize the text for offers), since our initial focus was on getting the design and UX right. Localization and/or complete customization of the look and feel is definitely on the roadmap.
We'll get to work on adding some more documentation for sure, but the short answer is that it's a JavaScript widget that runs everything for you on your site. You can check out the technical docs on the NPM package here: https://www.npmjs.com/package/@prosperstack/flow
Thanks so much for the honest feedback. I definitely agree about steering away from dark patterns and adding friction to cancellation. We want the cancellation process to be super easy, and hope to try achieve a balance that actually benefits customers instead of trying to trap them into not leaving.
Re: Show HN: ProsperStack – Use Stripe to automatically prevent cancellations
#30Just let people cancel imo.
Totally agreed! Our goal is to make the cancelling process smooth and easy, while also helping companies retain users who are leaving for preventable issues like price sensitivity. Another great use case is offering a free month or two for someone cancelling due to the current pandemic, hoping they'll be able to afford it again once business picks back up.
>Totally agreed!
Not to be too much of a jerk about it, but you clearly don't agree. Hard to tell exactly without a end to end demo but it looks like it's at least a couple questions and making sure you click the right button to cancel. And you have to be careful what you click because you swap the "success" button from cancel to accept offer. That's not the same as "just let people cancel".
I'm sure it makes sense from a business perspective. Forcing people to go through a couple questions and click off some offers will increase retention. It's not a big deal. Businesses do lots of things that are annoying to customers because ultimately it makes them more money. Just own that this is what you're doing.