Subscription Box Answers

Retention on Call: How Picking Up the Phone Can Save Your Subscribers

• Liam Brennan

Share episode

In this episode of Subscription Box Answers, we dive deep into one of the most impactful strategies for improving retention rates in your subscription box business: picking up the phone and talking directly to your customers. As we move into 2025, keeping customers happy and subscribed for longer is more critical than ever, especially after the holiday season when many new customers come on board. Reducing churn and increasing retention can significantly boost profitability, reduce customer acquisition costs, and create a more sustainable business.

I share a proven strategy we implemented at BusterBox mid-2024, where my business partners and I personally called customers who were set to cancel. This approach helped us gather valuable feedback, address individual concerns, and ultimately save hundreds of customers who would have otherwise left. We tailored solutions to common cancellation reasons—offering heavy chewer plans, bi-monthly subscriptions, or temporary skips—to meet their needs and keep them subscribed. Over six weeks, we saved more than 400 customers, translating to a significant boost in revenue and retention.

We also discuss how to scale this process, including creating scripts, identifying winning offers, and eventually delegating the task to employees. Beyond saving cancellations, we’ve also seen success with reactivating former customers and upselling premium products by phone. While this approach requires effort and resources, the results are undeniable—calling your customers can improve retention, provide critical insights, and even uncover new opportunities to grow your business.

Whether you’re just starting out or managing a larger subscription box company, this episode will give you actionable tips on how and when to use phone calls effectively. If you’ve ever been hesitant to reach out to your customers directly, I’ll walk you through why it’s worth the effort and how to get started.


If you have a question you want answered on the show head over to www.SubscriptionBoxResources.com. Join the FREE Facebook group and post your question there.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to Subscription Box Answers with your host, liam Brennan. You're no rubbish, no crap. Straight to the point podcast with real, actionable tips, real strategies and insights from the industry which will help you start and grow your own successful subscription box business. You ask the questions, you ask the questions, you ask the questions. Liam gives the answers. It's as simple as that.

Speaker 2:

Welcome back to a brand new episode of Subscription Box Answers. I hope you're having a really good day. On today's episode, we are discussing retention rates how to improve your retention rate, lower your churn rate, keep people signed up for longer and make more money from them. It's the perfect time to discuss this as we move into 2025, because hopefully you got a lot of new customers signed up during that busy Christmas period and you will want to keep those signed up for as long as possible. So in this episode, I'm going to share something we've been doing in BusterBox for probably the last six months or so, which has been working really well.

Speaker 2:

So around mid-2024, myself and my two business partners decided to try something. We wanted to improve our churn rate, because if we improve our churn rate, it means we keep people for longer. Our business is way more profitable. We have to spend less on ads to grow because we don't need to acquire as many customers to keep growing and, yeah, everything just works so much better. And that will be the same for your subscription box business as well. Churn needs to be a big priority. You get your ch low, your business will work so much better, and if you can even improve it by a small bit, it can make such a big difference. So this is what we tested right. We use Subway and we use commitment terms. So when somebody signs up, they commit for six or 12 months but they pay monthly. We've got like 95% of our customers on these long-term plans and this alone makes a big difference to our churn rate Literally a game changer for us.

Speaker 2:

But we can see when somebody is set to cancel. So say, if somebody comes in and they've made like four payments on a 12-month subscription and they set themselves to cancel, we can then see that they've another eight payments to make before the subscription automatically cancels. That's how commitment terms work, and we can also see the reason why somebody is looking to cancel. So it might be they've too much toys, the dogs destroying the toys too quickly, the dog doesn't like some of the treats. Whatever the reason is, we can see it clearly in Subli. It's really good. So we have all this data.

Speaker 2:

So what we decided to do was we decided to call all of our customers who were set to cancel, ask for some feedback about the box, take the feedback that's very valuable information as well and then mention to them before the call finishes. Look, I noticed you're looking to cancel because your dog destroys toys too quickly. Did you know we have a heavy chewer plan and we're happy to upgrade you to it for free. No matter what the reason was, we would always have a solution. Oh, we've too much stuff, okay. Do you know we can swap you to a bi-monthly plan? Do you know we can downgrade your subscription to a buster box light? Oh, it's too expensive. Oh, would you like to skip a couple of months? No matter what the reason was that they were set to cancel, we would have a solution. So what we actually did was myself and my two business partners made 50 calls a day each for about six weeks. We picked up the phone and we called all these people that were set to cancel. It was quite time consuming, but it was 100% worth it, because we managed to save a lot of people and we got some really valuable feedback about our business that we could then use to improve things going forward our business that we could then use to improve things going forward.

Speaker 2:

Now. One of the main reasons we decided to do it ourselves was, well, number one we just wanted to speak to people and figure out what they really thought of our product and get feedback. But number two we wanted to prove that this concept actually worked. The last thing we wanted to do was to go out and hire somebody or a couple of people and put them on the phone and the process wouldn't actually be proven and we wouldn't know if it would be worth it to do it or not, or what the benchmarks actually will be, and then, if it never worked, we would scrap it. We wanted to do it ourselves and we wanted to prove the process worked. We wanted to write scripts, we wanted to come up with winning offers. We wanted to have everything together. So after the six weeks we would be able to pass that over to employees and we'd have proper benchmarks and an idea of what success looked like Now, after the six weeks, we saved a lot of people.

Speaker 2:

We saved just over 400 people and if you calculate that out right, if you even look at this for your business, right, if you save 400 people who were 100% set to cancel and you work out, this is how much revenue they were bringing in. This is how much our customer acquisition cost is. Let's multiply that by 400, it works out that you're saving a lot of money. You make way more money by doing this, by just bringing down your churn rate by a bit. So we then hired two people to put them on the phone full time. They would call all the people that were set to cancel all day, every day, and try to save them. And that's been going on for a good few months now and it's been working really well and it's definitely been worth it.

Speaker 2:

Now, the only thing I'd say about it is there's obviously new people who are set to cancel coming into the system all the time, because we've new people coming in, people canceling people coming in, people set themselves to cancel, so there's always fresh leads. So there's always fresh leads. But after a while, like if you do a real blast, if you just call loads of people over a few weeks, it's harder to save people then, because you've literally called everybody and you've saved all the people that are going to be saved. So what we do is we rotate these people off the phones, like sometimes they're helping out with tickets and sometimes they're helping out with other things, and then the set to cancels will build up again and then they'll just blast them again. And it's really worthwhile.

Speaker 2:

And what we've tested as well is is reactivations. We've called people up good quality customers who were with us for a long time and cancelled. We've called them up and we've done the same process. We've asked them about feedback what did they think about the box, what did their dog think about the box? And then we hit them with an offer to try and win them back. Now that works as well, but it's not quite as good as the set to cancels. It can take a good amount of time to win somebody back Because obviously these people aren't expecting to be called and if somebody's actually cancelled and they haven't been receiving the box for a decent amount of time, then they may have mentally checked out and they've no intention of signing back up off a phone call. But it does work. We have got a lot of people back through reactivations by just picking up the phone and calling them. There was actually one week where our ad costs got quite expensive and we decided to put more of a focus into reactivations and we were calling people for a good few days that week and we won back a decent amount of people. So reactivations do work.

Speaker 2:

What works as well is is picking up the phone and up selling other products. So if you're selling, like prepaid subscriptions or other subscriptions, it can actually be worthwhile to call up your best customers and give them the opportunity to upgrade and save some money on a prepaid or to add a new subscription. We have different, like tree bundle subscriptions and toy bundle subscriptions and salmon oil subscriptions. So, yeah, it does work. And if you have employees on the phone, it can be very worthwhile to rotate the different kinds of calls they're making between them to keep things fresh.

Speaker 2:

Now, should you do this? I think it really depends on what size you're at. If you're only new, you probably shouldn't do this, unless your churn is absolutely diabolical. If're really bad churn, or if you just want to get feedback from customers, it definitely doesn't hurt to pick up the phone and call them and ask them what they think of your box. You will learn amazing information from those phone calls that can then be used to improve your business.

Speaker 2:

Now I've shared this with a few people and people are like there's absolutely no way I'm picking up the phone, I'm afraid to pick up the phone and talk to my customers. There's nothing really to be afraid of. We made a lot of phone calls and, honestly, the majority of them like a massive, massive amount of them were really really positive. People actually wanted to speak to us and we got were really, really positive. People actually wanted to speak to us and we got some really, really good feedback and we saved a lot of people. And I promise you, if you pick up the phone and you make the first few calls, it gets so much easier, so much easier, and it's definitely worth it.

Speaker 2:

It's a worthwhile exercise. You're probably doing things in your business at the minute that isn't worthwhile. You're just wasting time doing some kind of admin or busy body work that doesn't move the needle. I promise you, picking up the phone and speaking to your customers is worth it and you will learn a lot from it. Now, if you're a bigger box and you have the resources to hire people, this could be worthwhile doing it. It could be worthwhile. Work it out yourself. See what your churn rate would have to come down by for it to be a worthwhile exercise for your business. My guess is it doesn't need to come down a lot before this becomes highly profitable and actually worth the effort.

Speaker 2:

So we're going to keep continuing with this in BusterBox and I'm sure I will have another update around it, hopefully in a few months. Hope found that episode helpful. Could I ask you a big favor if you've been listening for a while and you've enjoyed the content, would you mind giving me a review? It can be on apple podcast spotify. Wherever you listen to this, it really doesn't matter, it just helps me get the show out to more people. Now we'll be back next week at the exact same time and, as always, if you have a question you want answered on the show, make sure you head over to subscriptionboxresourcescom, join the free facebook group and post your question there. Have a great day.