1. Avoid business risk. 

Everything ends. Yet we overlook it. For most consumers it is a significant part of the consumer experience. It locks down memory. It is psychologically one of the most impactful periods. But most businesses don’t see it that way. Happy to abandon their consumers at the end.

Your business knows lots about other periods of the consumer lifecycle. You intimately know your customer through sophisticated targeted advertising even before they arrive. Monitoring, research and digital behaviour data tells your business all about how the consumer users the product. But at the end? Nothing.

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 have 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. 

As a consumer experience, watching TV has little difference between cable and Netflix. But as an end there is plenty. 

Netflix says “We are proud of the no-hassle online cancellation. Members can leave when they want and come back when they want.” Netflix subscriber growth hit 118.9M in 2018, up from 94.36M the previous year. Achieving customer satisfaction of 78%, which dwarfs traditional Cable-TV at 62% the lowest result in 11 years. 

People like a safe, low risk way out. They have an option of a good ending from a confident company. Making a good ending doesn’t increase people leaving. It just means you care about your customers. And how you say goodbye.

3. Sustainability.

Society shouts. Quite rightly about the problems with environment. Collectively we want to do our bit. But strategically are we looking in the wrong places?

I hear many discussions about sustainability in the work I do. Most approaches look for technical improvements in materials or manufacturing process. An aim for circularity. And all require a new purchase. They promise a better purchase.

All seem to overlook the century old issue of eroded endings in the consumer lifecycle. The lost meaning, responsibility and action at the end, that was common. And now it is barren.

Plastic is not in the sea because it is a petroleum material. Plastics is in the sea because there was not a proper ending in the consumer lifecycle. We can see evidence of this in the PANT collection schemes of Northern Europe. A clear off-boarding built in throughout the consumer lifecycle.

Endings can be actionable and purposeful. They can capture the crap of consumerism.

Creating an end keeps the product under control.
Without an end your product lays with the fishes in the sea.

4. Pre-empt legislation.

In the last decade we have seen lots of legislation introduced specifically around the end of the consumer lifecycle. 

Globally businesses are now having to look at Scope 3 Greenhouse Gas Emissions. 1 and 2 look at the business energy consumption. But Scope 3 looks at upstream and downstream impact. One aspect of that is of course - product end of life. Many companies have no idea about the end of the products.

In UK financial services, the 7 day switch empowered customers to leave bad banking relationships, which previously took months. The Energy sector followed with the Energy Switch Guarantee.

In digital, GDPR introduced 3 clear endings that European citizens could use to end their data relationship. Soon after the California Consumer Privacy Act followed with similar legal powers for data endings.

So, endings are gonna happen to your consumer relationship.
You can start dealing with it pro-actively. 
Or wait until legislation enforces a consumer ending.

5. Innovation.

Have you thrown your budget at acquisition targets again? Just like every other year.

Business models are changing. Consumers are not staying with one brand forever. They are moving between brands. Embracing mobility in a modern marketplace. Few customers now are really new to any market? Many might have been customers before.

So short term acquisition is not what it used be. Businesses need to think more about long term strategy and the off-boarding experience. 

So don’t increase acquisition budgets, again.

Innovate in an emerging field of consumer experience.
Look at off-boarding and the end.

6. Increase sales.

Established thinking suggests talking about the end of a product or service relationship will deter the sale. Yet, some of the most successful and fastest growing companies have found success doing exactly that.

Both Kia cars and SnapChat clearly and proudly talk about the end of product experience at the beginning.

Kia cars introduced the 7 year warranty in 2007. Perceived as an end of product life guarantee - humans find it hard to project beyond 5 years in to the future. Its a product death date with the customer invited to the funeral of their car. According to COO of Kia Australia, Damien Meredith “The major reason people buy our product now is the warranty. Price has slipped to third.” Since the 7 year warranty was introduced Kia’s market share has doubled. 

SnapChat claim “Delete is our default.” 35% of Snapchat users use it because their content disappears. SnapChat hit 191 million users in Q1 2018.