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 of the proposed solutions to the damage of over consumption is to look for technical and efficiency improvements in materials or manufacturing processes. These often require a new purchase of a better ‘more sustainable’ or ‘more circular’ product. Overlooking what the consumer’s experience. Yet, consumerism is entirely based on what the consumer experiences.

We can’t always wait for a better product cycle to come along. We have to make an impact on current products. We can do this by making better consumer off-boarding experiences now.

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 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.

6. Increase sales.

People will tell me a “with every end, starts a beginning”. This misses the point of creating good endings. Business are incredibly experienced at beginnings with sales, marketing and advertising. Yet are blind to how endings impacts these sales. 

At the beginning of the consumer lifecycle, while considering commitment, people find it reassuring to have a clear way out. Or as Daniel Pink, the sales guru⁠ puts it, “when people are thinking of buying, they like to see an off-ramp”. Customers want to feel reassured that there is a way out of the commitment.

This is what Kia Cars achieved with their 7 year warranty. People saw a safe ending. And committed to the beginning. Kia doubled global sales by making this ending.

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.