Tuesday. 9:12 a.m. Manolo has spent twenty-seven minutes trying to wear someone down.
This time, he's the one sweating.
—It won't take the discount, he says, pointing at the customer support chat.
—What does it want?
—To cancel.
—Then cancel the subscription.
He looks at me as though I've suggested throwing the safe out of the window.
Manolo sells a subscription to business reports. Signing up takes an email address and a credit card. Cancelling requires logging in, finding a form, explaining your reasons and waiting for someone from the retention team to contact you.
The sign-up button is orange and takes up half the screen. The way out looks like the footnote on a medicine leaflet.
—We have a process, he says.
—I can see that. A slide on the way in. A civil service entrance exam on the way out.
Today they're running a trial with a customer who wants her AI assistant to manage her account. She's authorised the cancellation. The team has checked her identity and her request. So far, so good.
The trouble starts when they try to persuade the assistant to stay.
On screen, Laura from Customer Support offers it three months at half price.
The assistant replies that its user has requested cancellation and it isn't authorised to accept another offer.
Laura asks what they could improve.
The assistant repeats the request.
Laura suggests a phone call.
The assistant asks for written confirmation of cancellation.
Manolo reaches for the keyboard.
—Tell the account holder to contact us personally.
—But you've already checked the authorisation, I say.
—I need to make sure she understands what she's losing.
—She understood when she stopped using it four months ago.
Manolo types that he'd like to speak to a person.
I stare at the sentence.
—Funny, Manolo. Your customers have been asking for the same thing for three years.
The scene is fictional. The doorway it comes through is already being built. On 6 October, Meta and Sierra announced Personal Agent Protocol, a proposal to let personal agents interact with businesses on a user's behalf. It includes identifying whom they represent and distinguishing what they can read from what they can change. At the time of the announcement, they planned to publish an initial specification during October. That doesn't mean any assistant can cancel any contract today. It means companies are working to let a customer send someone else to deal with the paperwork.
And the someone dealing with Manolo has the whole morning free.
—This wrecks our retention, he says.
Laura stops typing.
—Maybe it wrecks our retention report.
She opens the customer's record. She paid for the first month, used two reports and stopped logging in. A few weeks ago she started looking for a way to cancel. Today she delegated the job.
Manolo opens his dashboard. That account was green.
—She'd been with us for eight months.
—And hadn't logged in for four, says Laura.
—But she kept renewing.
Laura turns the screen around. There's an earlier cancellation request, closed because the customer didn't respond to the offer of a phone call.
—We marked this one as “customer saved”.
—Because she didn't leave.
—Because she didn't answer the phone at eleven on a Wednesday. She was working.
Manolo stares at the green. A minute ago it represented a wonderful relationship.
Of course a renewal can mean satisfaction. It can also mean forgetfulness, lack of time, or having to speak to three people to stop paying thirty euros for a service. The bank charge alone doesn't tell you which.
Manolo had decided they all meant love.
The chat pings again. The assistant is still asking for confirmation.
—Doesn't it get bored? he asks.
—The customer did. That's why she sent it.
Laura explains how her job works. Resolving a query in five minutes is good. A cancellation that never gets completed is better. At the end of the month, they celebrate how many customers they've managed to “save”.
—What if the customer comes back angry because we've charged her for another month? I ask.
—That goes under complaints.
In another tab. With another manager. One department's success waiting to become the next department's problem.
—So we remove all the checks? says Manolo.
—The ones that stop a stranger tampering with an account make sense. This customer is already identified and the request is authorised. What does the fourth offer verify that the first one didn't?
Laura smiles. She's wanted to ask that question for months without losing her bonus.
They open the cancellation journey together. It takes Manolo a while to find it, even though he knows it exists. When he reaches the form, he discovers that a reason is mandatory and none of the options says “I don't need it anymore”.
—That wouldn't give us much information, he says.
—Right now they're giving you made-up information so they can get out.
They agree to try a shorter journey. Verify identity and permissions. Explain when the service ends and what happens to the data. Let the customer confirm cancellation without booking a call. If they want to hear an offer, they can. If they don't, let them finish.
Laura adds something to the report. Incomplete cancellations will no longer automatically count as customers saved. They'll look at whether those people use the product again and whether they later dispute a charge.
—Our cancellation rate will go up, says Manolo.
—It might. You'll also have a better idea of who wants to stay.
He likes that considerably less than having everything green.
The useful question to ask about a subscription is uncomfortable. If your customer had someone to remember the renewal, compare alternatives and handle the paperwork, would they still choose you?
If the answer is yes, find out why and look after it. If the answer is that they wouldn't find the cancel button, there's product work waiting behind your magnificent loyalty figure.
Laura confirms the cancellation. The assistant says thank you and closes the conversation.
Manolo stares at the empty chat.
—It didn't even want to hear about the new features.
—Neither did its owner. Now you've managed to find out.
Before we leave, he renames the “customers saved” column. He types “incomplete cancellations”. The number is exactly the same. He finds it much harder to show people.
What Manolo called customer loyalty came with forty minutes of hold music.
Thanks for reading.
We all know a Manolo. Sometimes we are Manolo. A new one every Tuesday.