Intuit · Sr. Content Designer · 2024
QuickBooks cancel flow
Canceling took seven screens and a phone call, and we had one week to fix it. The results were better than anyone expected.
Fintech · Regulated content- Problem
- Canceling QuickBooks took seven screens and a phone call. Leadership flagged it as a compliance risk and gave us one week.
- Decision
- Keep the retention offers and remove the friction. Present the offer clearly, then let people cancel in two screens without a phone call.
- Complications
- Marketing owned cancellation and was measured on retention. Every screen we cut was a save attempt someone had fought for, and their forecast said removing them would mean 20% more cancellations.
- Outcome
- We shipped in a week, and cancellations rose about 1% instead of the forecasted 20%.
Seven screens and a phone call to cancel
The new flow ends with one screen to cancel and a clear explanation of what happens next.
Every screen was a save attempt, and every save attempt had someone’s retention number attached to it.
My position at the time was that making it hard to leave isn’t a growth strategy, and it’s frustrating for people who have already made up their minds.
Working with marketing, who owned the retention number
Content design wants to remove the retention saves, marketing wants to keep them, and somebody has to win.
The saves were the only offer we had, and they showed up at the worst possible moment, after someone had already decided to leave. The same offer works better when it’s made clearly and earlier.
Marketing owned the cancel experience and was measured on retention, and they’d just been asked to remove the screens behind their number in a single week. Their concern made a lot of sense.
Our solution was to separate two things that had shipped together for so long nobody noticed they were different: the offer and the friction. Someone leaving might really want a lower tier, a pause, or some help, and that’s worth offering, but not by trapping them. So we kept the offers, presented them clearly, and made cancellation itself one screen. Everyone got what they needed.
Marketing forecast a 20% rise in cancellations, and it came in around 1%
Rise marketing forecast
Rise that happened
From brief to shipped
The friction wasn’t keeping customers around. It was frustrating people who were leaving anyway and costing us goodwill with everyone who went through it, including the people who stayed.
I owned the content on every screen, and legal, marketing, product, and engineering all moved just as fast. Shipping this in a week was a real team effort.
Project details
- Company
- Intuit, QuickBooks
- Role
- Sr. Content Designer
- Timeline
- 2024, one week from brief to ship
- Tools and methods
- Regulated contentCancel and retention flowsCross-functional negotiationGenAI draftingFigma