Hello again, and Happy New Year! I hope you managed to have some time off over the holiday season and have returned to work with a new enthusiasm. Okay, so that might be asking for too much. But I hope at least you still want to make the web a better place.
One of the consequences of caring about the user experience is that you end up seeing bad experiences everywhere, which happened to be over my time off.
I tried to do a bit of a digital tidy-up over the break by unsubscribing to a load of emails and dumping some of those SaaS apps that are more of a luxury than a necessity. In the process of doing this, I came to realize just how poorly we treat people who are trying to unsubscribe from our digital offerings.
Ways That Offboarding So Often Sucks
This failure manifests itself in various ways. However, the results are the same: disgruntled users.
In extreme cases, these terrible experiences are intentional. For example, companies who make it as hard to unsubscribe as possible to get you to give up entirely.
On other occasions, companies desperately try to persuade you to stay with endless offers or “Are you sure” and “We will miss you” messaging.
Then, some companies ask you lots of questions about why you are leaving before letting you unsubscribe. Often, this is born out of a genuine desire to improve things but ultimately frustrates users more.
However, I suspect it simply comes down to neglect in many cases. We don’t give offboarding the attention it deserves.
I know that is true for unsubscribing to this newsletter. Until I sat down to write this, it hadn’t even occurred to me to check the process. As it happens, it isn’t too bad, but that is more down to the platform I use than any choice on my part.
That is the other problem. Often, we are limited in what we can do to improve the offboarding experience, depending on the technology we are working with. And rarely do we consider offboarding when choosing a platform.
Why Offboarding Matters
I guess you could argue it doesn’t matter if the offboarding experience is terrible, as the person is leaving anyway. However, that is taking a very short-term view.
How you handle the offboarding process can impact your reputation. Users with a positive offboarding experience are likelier to speak positively about your brand.
Offboarding is an opportunity to leave a lasting impression. By providing a good user experience, you can maintain customer loyalty even after they’ve left.
Also, users may choose to leave temporarily but could return in the future. A positive offboarding experience increases the likelihood of them coming back.
Ways to Provide a Better Offboarding Experience
So, how can we make the offboarding experience better?
For a start, we need to let the user complete their task of unsubscribing with the minimum friction. A good rule of thumb is that it should be as easy to unsubscribe as it was to subscribe. So, if they signed up online without speaking to someone, they should be able to unsubscribe similarly.
I have no problem with you persuading them to change their minds, but only do that after unsubscribing.
For example, once they have unsubscribed, you could write:
You have successfully unsubscribed. However, if you change your mind in the next 48 hours, you can undo your cancellation here, and we will give you a 30% discount for three months as a thank you.
Users will be happier because you haven’t put obstacles in their way and will be more receptive to your messaging because you are not interrupting their task.
The same is true for asking questions about why somebody is unsubscribing. It is absolutely fine to ask, but wait until they have finished.
What you must never do is use deceptive design techniques to discourage people from unsubscribing. That doesn’t just include making it difficult to do; it also means avoiding emotionally charged language.
People are not stupid and know when they are being manipulated. Yes, it may work, but it will leave a bad taste in people’s mouths that will ultimately cause more harm than good.
Add Offboarding to Your Task List
Sorry if I have just given you another thing to add to your 2024 task list. However, the way we treat customers when they leave is a significant component in shaping how your brand is seen and the likelihood of getting returning customers. And always remember that returning customers have a much lower acquisition cost than new ones. That is the most significant business case for user experience design there is.
