Make Products Difficult to Abandon
Originally published as part of, “The Day Before Digital Transformation” by Phil Perkins and Cheryl Smith
In late 2018, the hashtag #DeleteFacebook started trending on Twitter after it was revealed that Facebook was used to target voters and influence the 2016 US election. Facebook was exposed for selling[i] massive amounts of customer data (87 million individuals’ data sold by a third party after Facebook gave them access to it). The company faced public outrage, their brand was significantly tarnished.…and their user base went up.
Facebook has built in mechanisms to address at-risk users, which makes it nearly impossible for anyone to abandon the platform. Users have invested a lot of time and effort into Facebook and they do not want to lose the benefits they have received by giving Facebook their network, pictures, and privacy.
The same is true for games and rewards apps. They ensure that when a user leaves the game or reward, they leave with an unspent balance of money or points. This significantly decreases the chance that the user will delete the app.
For B2B applications, it becomes more difficult to abandon a solution when it becomes part of existing processes, it starts to house critical data, it starts to integrate with other internal and external systems, or it becomes the system of record for critical data. For example, if only one executive decides he or she wants to turn off your application, that individual may need to get approval from every executive they work with who interfaces with your system, which often becomes an insurmountable task.
Sometimes these internal mechanisms fail, and the user starts to show quantifiable signs of abandoning your platform. There is a short period of time to perform an intervention and get the user re-engaged. If you miss that window, they become abandoned customers who stop interacting with your organization’s solutions, and you can no longer monetize (or save costs from) their engagement.
How many times have you called a service or product provider you have decided to cancel, and they talked you into staying by lowering your price or your monthly rate, or offering additional features or functions? It is more difficult to do that in the digital world, sometimes because the core applications are free so there is no phone number to call or financial reason to call it, and sometimes because many digital organizations operate almost entirely online. But the concept of enticing users to stay is just as important to build into your digitized products and services as it was with the manual processes you designed around your traditional products and services.
[i] “Zuckerberg’s Facebook data was sold to Cambridge Analytica, too
Even Facebook’s CEO wasn’t safe from the massive data grab by “malicious third parties.” Alfred Ng, www.cnet.com, April 11, 2018.