The internet has led to widespread transparency. The threat of a nasty Yelp review keeps shop owners civil. Startups embrace this new reality because all it takes is one bad tweet. Customer service will never be the same again. So how does a digital media company founded in 1851 adapt?
All businesses go to great lengths to keep customers. That's not new. The culture of venture capital has made startups more aggressive. There's so much pressure to grow, they have to hold onto every customer they get. Winning users is often more important than sales revenue for early-stage startups. That's why designers are forced to combat churn through sketchy design.
We've all signed up for an app, gotten less value than we had hoped and tried to cancel. That's when we realize these tech companies focus more on growth than changing the world. Shocker, right? To make their charts go up and to the right, startup founders have to hold onto the users they acquire. It's hard to scale if you gain 1,000 users a day and lose 700 the next.
That’s why so many apps are still so hard to cancel in this era of user-friendly design and transparency. Comcast is notorious for their poor customer service, but that's unsurprising. Their dehumanizing tactics took decades to perfect.
One of the advantages of software is how easy it is to customize. Many services would gain more casual users if it were easier to stop and start. Netflix does this well. Done watching the new season of House of Cards? Stop subscribing until next year. Done.
But Netflix's user base is big enough to afford this user-centric design choice. Most apps stretch cancellations out like a bad breakup. If you can even find the cancellation link, they subject you to a series of screens to make sure you want to end it. They throw out 50% off discounts to entice you. Once you finally cancel, they want to know where everything went wrong.
Participating in their market research makes it harder for others to leave. If the collective results reveal a narrative, designers will address it to retain more users. This constant recalibration is why SaaS is such a popular business model. Tech companies can test a hypothesis for very little money. It's the same reason why Doritos experiments with edible chemicals like Walter White.
The New York Times predates the combustion engine, but they're playing a modern game. They're doing well. They're still relevant. The Times provides interactive experiences, video and mobile apps. They recently saw a spike in subscriptions due to all the political upheaval in the United States. Subscribing to the "failing New York Times" became an act of slacktivist patriotism.
It was natural to read more news as the world became more volatile. I subscribed to The Times for this reason. That and I was sick of opening a private browser window to avoid the paywall. After about a month, I realized that the last thing I needed was another subscription service. That's when I tried to cancel.
Based on my personal experience, The New York Times is more like the mob than a modern tech company. With news bureaus all over the world, they are one of the few institutions standing between us and fake news. That's why it's unfortunate that their strategy makes a loan shark look sympathetic.
You can’t cancel a subscription to The New York Times by yourself. You have to call in. The Times is well aware that no one likes calling anyone anymore. Yet they'll sooner pay someone a salary rather than add a cancel button to their website.
Funny enough, my subscription lasted until my credit card got stolen. True story. I had to cancel my Visa — which isn’t always worth a phone call either — before The Times stopped charging me. Even then they harassed me over email for weeks. The New York Times needs to know this approach won't win over Millennials.
Digital products are only as good as their word of mouth and their reviews. The New York Times should realize how much trust it takes to enter a credit card number. The last thing they should do is hold that information hostage. Otherwise, everyone will start using Visa gift cards to subscribe.
