Why you should make it easy for users to quit your product
andrewchenblog.com
andrewchenblog.com
I have no doubt some MBA at Microsoft thought they could shave a couple percentage points off their attrition rates with this tactic. I sure as hell will think twice before I subscribe for any other Microsoft service again.
If you go with the easy in, easy out approach, the customer, most likely at the department or tech level, tries out your product as SaaS, with self-service If he likes it, he signs up with a subscription. The benefits are lower sales cost, a shorter sales cycle, and less time spent on tire kickers. You are probably getting revenue in 2 or 3 months.
More peripheral services like instant messaging or collaboration tools are easier to do that with. Something like a CRM system is probably harder due to the volume of data you'd need to port and the large change in how people do their work, re-training required, etc. Something even more core like supply-chain management or an accounting system is even harder to try-before-you-buy, and the penalty for trying something that doesn't work is way, way higher. In order to get to the point where you know if it's going to fail or not, you have to take some big risks and sink in a huge amount of time and money.
Yup.
I would like to see information about ease of exit included more often and more prominently in reviews of sign-up-based products. In fact, it would be interesting to have a site that gave only ease of exit information, for all kinds of products.