After 15 years as a customer with Intuit’s Quickbooks, they wouldn’t let me leave them. And it took me forever to break up finally. The break up has been a long time coming, but it’s not easy migrating bookkeeping software, and I have a host of other reasons why I didn’t leave them until Bench came along in my Instagram feed and swept me off my feet.
“You run your business.
We’ll do your bookkeeping.”
In that message, Bench demonstrates that they totally get me. They get my pain point – and let me do what I need to do.
Now, it’s not like there aren’t a million bookkeepers out there who offer that. Over 15 years, I could have Googled bookkeepers in my area, set up meetings, and done what needs to be done to get someone to do this for me.
But Bench made everything ridiculously easy for me and they made it easy to finally break up with Quickbooks. Only Quickbooks wasn’t going to let go that easily.
Here’s a quick overview of the breakup.
- Login and look for a place to cancel account
- Finally, find it and cancel account. My access and subscription will expire at the end of the current billing period. Wait, did I?
- 3: I log back in later to make sure and see this: “cancellation scheduled.”
Am I canceled or not?
- November 7 rolls around and I get an alert from my credit card. Quickbooks has billed me for the next month.
Do you value your time? Are you someone who schedules out a perfectly choreographed day so you can not only work on your thing and advance your own ideas but be reactive to everyone else’s needs?
The last thing you want to do is squander that valuable time on the phone bickering with Quickbooks over a lousy $70 ping to your credit card. But they will not win, dammit, and so, you pick up the phone and try to be friendly with the poor soul on the other end who is just trying to do the job they are paid to do.
The thing is, they weren’t OK with my explanation that I canceled weeks ago and I should not have been billed. They wanted proof that I canceled on the day I said. He wanted to do a computer takeover to have me log in and do a bunch of other things to show that I had, in fact, canceled weeks previously. I told him absolutely I am absolutely not taking the time to honor this absurd request.
Why do you need proof? Why wouldn’t you trust your customer of 15 years, and more importantly, why do you even need the evidence? What if I wanted to cancel as of NOW?
^^^
That’s how long the phone call took to cancel a subscription (I had already canceled) after 15 years of being a loyal customer (LTV of about $18,000).
Actions Speak Louder than Words
Making it tricky for people to leave is not a clever tactic to improve customer retention. Meanwhile, why would you even want customers who don’t want to be with you?
The stories we tell as brands go far deeper than home page messages and email campaigns. How is the overall customer experience – even if they’re walking out the door for the last time? Do you let the door hit them in the ass, or do you hold it open for them and thank them for their business?
Thanks for spending your valuable time reading,
*This is not a sponsored post but that Bench link above (and here) gives both you and I a free month of bookkeeping if you sign up. I also get a gift card. 🙂 I wouldn’t bother sharing it if I didn’t love my new bookkeeping service.
Photo by izhar khan from Pexels
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