More Member Feedback - Cancellation feedback 4/5

Feedback from cancelling members can be the most powerful information that an organisation can get their hands on. Don’t be like a couple of clubs we know that don’t ask for leaver feedback because it will all be negative, and don’t ignore the negative reviews. You are missing out on all the information that you need to improve your business. 

We are not talking about leave reason here (moving away, anyone?) but genuine user comments about what has led them to choose to cancel. A phone call (if you have the resource) is great from a customer service perspective, and absolutely the best way to try to turn around a cancellation request, but the anonymous (or not) survey where an ex-member or leaver can leave some constructive comments will garner lots more honest opinion.

Cancellation process

Here’s an example of the kind of cancellation processes we have set-up for clients.

1. Talk to as many members who try to cancel as possible. A few will write or walk in asking to cancel, but the majority will cancel at the bank. Try to talk to as many as you can.
2. If you can’t save them, send them a link to “complete this form to cancel your membership” implying that they need to fill out the form in order to process their cancellation. The form is 3-5 questions – open format comments, no dropdown fields
3. Send the same link to the members you can’t get to speak to.
4. Process all feedback requests accordingly, look at all the results (if you’ve got hundreds of feedback comments, you’ll need something like MyCustomerLens to analyse trends between sites, memberships, demographics, etc)
5. Follow-up with a thank you – explain that their membership is cancelled, or why not, or when it can be cancelled.

What we’ve learnt from leaver feedback

One of the most surprising findings from this kind of process, is that there are always people ‘leaving’ who don’t want to cancel. Either down to a bank error, misunderstanding or mistake at the front desk, there are always members who are immediately saved because they don’t want to leave!

Looking through leaver analysis on a MyCustomerLens dashboard, it’s interesting to see a lot of negative sentiment about customer service, cleaning, and contracts, as you’d expect. But there’s also often big issues with the processes; leaving and joining, and around Direct Debits too. Understanding where these issues are more serious (at which sites, for instance) is incredibly valuable, since these are all problems that you can address, therefore making a difference to your attrition the very next month. Taking action is better than finding out that the majority of members claim to be moving away, in the hope you won’t contact them again!

This is the fourth article in a series on customer feedback. Subscribe or come back next week for the next installment.