User onboarding is one of the core components of UX (User Experience).
Similarly, user offboarding is also equally important. Many brands have started taking their app or website’s user onboarding experience very seriously and have been working on it.
Yes, the trend is gaining momentum but unfortunately user offboarding hasn’t gained its fair share of importance so far so. This article is an attempt to grab the attention of those who care about UX towards user-off boarding.
This article explains the importance of user offboarding and also gives some practical tips. You’ll get to know about user offboarding best practices too.
Let me quickly explain the term ‘user offboarding’ for those who do not know or have not heard of it before – user offboarding is a process a user goes through your website when he/she wants to end the business relationship with you (deleting an account, cancelling a subscription etc).
It also refers to post-conversion experience of a user on the website – what is the user asked to do on the website after completing a purchase or the exit process he undergoes on the site post-sales.
Importance of Providing Users a Great User Offboarding Experience
Image source: Cat Noone
Many a times it gets difficult for users to discontinue a service they had availed or subscribed to – say, closing/deleting an account, cancelling a subscription, stopping auto-renewal of a service etc.
There are service providers who try their best to retain their users through unfair rules/policies, tricky procedure or even shady tactics or they show you clauses in fine prints to make money of you before you part ways with the company or service provider.
Similar things happen when you place an order or make a purchase on a website as well – delay or refusal to refund when it is rightful, delay or complex process to exchange a damaged product etc.
Many businesses still believe in the old thinking that every attempt should be made to stop a customer from parting ways even if it amounts to causing them difficulty or significant monetary loss. But, they surprisingly they do not realize that a bad user offboarding experience can damage the reputation of their businesses badly.
Bad user offboarding not only breaks users’ trust on your brand and but also results in a bad view of your product or service and the experience associated with it. There are anyway parting ways, so what’s the big deal, right?
Wrong!
User part ways for many reasons – dissatisfaction with the service or product, it’s not useful anymore, there is no need of it anymore or there may even be cases where users may not need the service now but may come back later.
A pleasant user offboarding experience leaves a great impression on your users, they may come back later to subscribe to your service or if they were very satisfied with your service and are quitting only for other reasons, they may even recommend your product/service to others.
In contrast, a bad user offboarding experience may result in sustained negative word-of-mouth which may irreparably damage your brand’s reputation.
Providing a Pleasant User Offboarding Experience – Tips and Best Practices
User offboarding Journey Mapping
Knowing your audience in-depth, analyzing and identifying the reasons why they unsubscribe or cancel your service or part ways is the first step. Brainstorming with your team, closed user group testing, surveys etc. are some of the ways to find out the reasons.
Finding out the reasons will not only help you to build more a relevant user flow and task flows but also, helps you to fix key issues with respect to your product or service if any, which will, in turn, help you to greatly minimize the number of cancellations.
Based on the findings, build user flow and tasks flows – once the user decides to unsubscribe, what should the user do next – define the step by step process and workout the path he/she needs to take and also the tasks that the user needs to do.
Raise relevant questions and find answers – is the process too long? Where does the user face issue in the whole process? Is the process easier, quicker and convenient? What are the pain points?
If your user flow addresses these broad issues, you are half-way through towards providing a good offboarding experience. Rest, you need to work on the personalization part based on specific user inputs to make the experience even more seamless and positive.
Below given are the dos and don’ts and also some practical tips to improve offboarding experience.
Positive Approach and Transparency
As discussed before many businesses make the whole user offboarding process a bitter experience which often results in bad word-of-mouth and completely diminishes the chance of user coming back to them. The alternate and sustainable approach is to make the whole user offboarding process a positive one.
Avoid tricks or deceptive methods to retain users. Do not hide or make the cancel or unsubscribe button less visible. Do not make them go through a complex process such as asking the user to send email or call you followed by a long processing delay.
Do not charge the users unfairly or deny any refund due by citing clauses mentioned in the fine prints as reasons.
Such unfairly actions are often the reasons why customers go ahead and post horribly bad reviews. In today’s times bad reviews severely damage businesses’ reputation online and remember that reviews are one of the very important factors in local search rankings (search engine rankings).
The positive approach includes having a transparent and quick user offboarding process. Make the cancel or unsubscribe button visible, clearly convey the consequences of cancellation.
LinkedIn ensures a quick and clear offboarding process. Go to ‘accounts and settings’ and then to ‘subscription’ – you’ll find ‘Close your LinkedIn account’ text big and bold right below ‘Account’ as shown in the screenshot.
Once you click ‘Close your LinkedIn account’, it takes you to another page where at the top you see a message that shows that they care – ‘we’re sorry to see you go’ and right below that they clearly explain the consequence of closing the account.
On the same page, they use ‘guilt trip’ method as a retention strategy where they make you realize that you’ll lose contact with people you know in your professional life. Faces of some of your connections are shown to increase the impact.
Below that you can see the feedback form that asks you to tell them the reason behind the decision to close the account.
Through-out the process, display encouraging and positive messages (ex: You are one of our esteemed customers, we are really sorry to see you go)
Here is another example – Quora too provides a very simple and quick user offboarding experience
Go to Privacy section, you’ll find the both deactivate and delete options clearly in red and the red color though makes the links clearly visible, it also gives the user an impression that it is not something that they should do ( red is often used to indicate danger or emergency alert/alarm ).
Once you click on either of the links, you will be told the consequence of deactivating or deleting the account along with the ‘deactivate’ and ‘delete’ buttons.
Deactivating the account is better than delete because in the former case you’ll be able to recover your data later – so showing both the options together will make the user think a bit before taking the final decision. Many may opt to deactivate instead of deleting as you never know, they may want to come back.
After you finally click on the delete button, a final warning of the consequences is shown and here buying time is used as a retention strategy. If the user changes his/her mind, he/she may choose to come back and login again within 14 days and the user’s data will remain intact.
Show that you care – a better retention strategy
Instead of adopting tricky methods or making the process complex, making the user feel respected and important is a better retention strategy.
Give them better options. Provide more value –say a discount or a limited period trial of a next level upgrade. Give assurance to resolve issues if any – show them a quick contact CTA. Pause Vs. cancel – offer them the option to pause the service instead of deleting or cancelling the account – it’s a win-win situation where user’s data will remain saved and since the user is still a member, there is a better chance of him/her coming back in the future.
Pure Chat, a sales management tool, makes a very positive approach towards the users who want to cancel the account – ‘maybe we can help’ at the top of the dialog box hints to the user that he/she may be taking a hasty decision and there are options to consider – such a positive line shown at the right time makes one think a bit.
They offer to talk to the user about the issues or there is an option to ‘pause’ the account instead of cancelling it, which will help the user retain his/her data.
You can also see two buttons clearly, one leading to the plans and billing section (there is a chance of user changing his mind or he may downgrade to a lower plan) and the second one is the cancel button clearly visible.
Above the buttons they clearly display the consequences of cancelling the account with an alternate option to ‘downgrade to free’ so that they can retain their data yet don’t have pay for it – which is again a very persuasive CTA.
End it on a Positive or Cheerful Note
Despite the positive approach and the persuasive offers, some users may not want to stay back. They have already made up their mind. It could be because of financial reasons too. Wish them luck. Thank them. Display a smiley. Display a funny message. Tell them that they are welcome to subscribe again.
Most importantly, ask them to feedback, give a quick list of reasons to choose from – additionally add ‘other’ option and a field to explain if the reason has to be elaborately told.
Finally, when they unsubscribe or cancel the account, along with the cancelled/unsubscribed message, you may even display a friendly message with some animation and ask them to resubscribe or sign up again in a funny, cheerful way (Note: it depends on the nature of your business and the types of services you offer, for example – it may work in case of email subscription and may not in case of SaaS-based subscriptions.).
Design, Implement and Test
Once user flow and task flows are built based on your findings and the tips/ best practices explained above, it’s time to implement and test.
Go for closed user group testing. Ask them to go through the process and feedback. Let them share their unbiased experience with you including the difficulties they faced and at what stage. Identify the gaps and fix the issues.
Once you throw open the newly designed user offboarding process to your larger target audience, you may even make a final call or email those who part ways – thank them for using your service and go for a quick feedback session – did you face any problem while cancelling or deleting the account? If yes, at which stage did you face the issue and why? – asking simple questions like these will help you to understand issues from your target audience’s perspective.
Last but not the least, use analytics effectively – at what stage of the user offboarding process, majority of the users drop-off and decide to call or email you instead. Also, analyze the kind of complaints w.r.t cancellations you receive.
Despite having an easy offboarding process, do your users choose to call or email you? Is it because the ‘delete’ or ‘deactivation’ button has been placed somewhere deep inside the account setting section that the users are not being able to find it? Or is it because parts of the user offboarding process are a bit confusing? – Raise valid questions, fix issues, test and fine-tune the process with an objective to provide a great user-off boarding process.
Providing a great user onboarding experience is highly important to make a lasting first impression on the users and to keep the user retention rate high.
Similarly, providing a great offboarding experience is equally important to leave a positive impression about your brand on your users’ minds which in turn results in positive word of mouth, low chance of negative word of mouth and high chance of users coming back to use your service or product again.
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