Reasons ends help business.
Engaging in endings can help businesses align with new business models, increase consumer engagement, raise customer satisfaction, protect brand equity, broaden business influence, pre-empt legislation, maximise sustainability and complete circularity.
Why end?
1. Avoid business risk.
Businesses pride themselves on data and knowing lots about their customers – at onboarding, observing potential customers through sophisticated digital marketing, in usage, monitoring behaviour data of how the customer uses the product.
But at the end? Little data is observed or captured. Leaving businesses blind.
Overlooking an area of business is a business risk.
Endings are part of your business.
2. Consumer satisfaction.
There are some strange quirks with endings. For example, businesses that engage at the end make it easier for the consumer to experience higher consumer satisfaction.
Netflix is a good example. They are proud of their easy ‘come and go’ contract. People can stop and start when they want to. In contrast US cable companies lock people in to a contract for a year. With aggressive punishment clauses. Netflix consumer satisfaction is in the mid 80s and going up. US cable companies, consumer satisfaction is in the mid 60s and has been going down for 11 years.
The difference is the end.
Some businesses design for it, some try to avoid it.
3. Circularity and Sustainability.
Many proposed solutions to overconsumption focus on technical or efficiency improvements, often requiring new purchases of “more sustainable” products, or putting a certification symbol where a consumer experience should be.
We should design consumer off-boarding experiences that bond provider and consumer together in mutual purpose to neutralise the negative consequences of consumption.
Annual business spend on ESG $480,000.
ESG type symbols in the world 450.
*Publicly-listed companies spend $220,000 to $480,000 annually on ratings (Reuters), often leading to certificates and marketing symbols. Consumers struggle to understand the many environmental labels. There are 200 labels in the EU and over 450 worldwide (EU).
4. Pre-empt legislation.
In the last decade we have seen lots of legislation around the world introduced specifically around the end of the consumer lifecycle.
From GDPR and California Consumer Privacy act in digital, to Scope 3 Greenhouse Gas Emissions in product manufacturing, to Energy Switch Guarantee and 7 Day Switch in services. These pieces of legislation are often hidden from the consumer. Yet making them clearer as experiences could improve legal adherence, consumer perception and product experience.
5. Innovation.
Businesses aspire to be innovative, yet throw enormous amounts of money in to well trodden areas Customer Experience (onboarding and usage) for marginal improvements.
The end of the consumer lifecycle is a wide open landscape with enormous opportunities, little competition, and the potential to create new areas of innovation. Customers are desperate for improvement.
80% of companies plan to increase their level of investment in CX. *
Yet there’s “marked rise” of bad endings.**
*(Zendesk 2024)
**The National Law Review reported a “marked rise” in dark patterns, including Roach Motel tactics (never leave), in late 2023. A Dovetail survey found over 40% of consumers faced unplanned financial consequences due to this.
6. Increase sales.
People often say, "with every good end, starts a beginning," missing the importance of good endings. Businesses excel at beginnings but overlook how endings impact sales. As Daniel Pink notes, customers feel reassured by a clear exit.
Kia Cars 7-year warranty provided an ending to the product. Customers loved it so much it doubled global sales.
Kia 7 year warranty (ending)
200% global sales increase.
7. Brand equity
Brands lose lots when a customer leaves. Not just the revenue of a loyal customer, but, arguably more important, the brand equity. Gargantuan effort, resources, and money at the beginning is lost at the end. Ask any consumer, who found it a difficult to leave, what they think of that brand after departure and you will always hear their promise of ‘never again’.
Business need to protect their brand, and the memories of a good experience at the end.