Subscription Cancel Flows and Failed-Payment Recovery
Cancel flows with reason-matched save offers, plus decline-aware payment retries and dunning emails, checked against cancel laws.
Before & after
Same prompt, same agent — the only difference is the skill.
Churn is a major challenge for subscription businesses. You should focus on customer success and retention. Consider implementing exit surveys to understand why customers leave, then address those pain points. You can offer win-back emails or discounts to at-risk customers. Some businesses use dunning emails to recover failed payments. You might also try reaching out personally to high-value customers who are considering cancellation. Track your churn rate and aim to improve it over time.
CHURN PREVENTION STRATEGY: CANCELLATION FLOW DESIGN STAGE 1: PRE-CANCELLATION (User hits 'Cancel' button) Cancellation intent screen with reason-selection radio buttons: • Too expensive → 30% discount for 3 months • Missing features → Roadmap sneak-peek + Q3 release list • Switching apps → Data export guide + switch bonus offer STAGE 2: SAVE OFFER (If user still proceeds) • Escalation offer: Last-chance discount (50% off annual) with 24-hour deadline • Social proof: 'Join 5k+ who reconsidered' • One-click recovery button prominently placed STAGE 3: POST-CANCELLATION • Day 0: Confirmation email with save-offer reminder • Day 3: 'What can we improve?' survey • Day 7: Value-reminder email (case study: what they're losing) • Day 14: Win-back offer (1-month free if reactivated) FAILED PAYMENT RECOVERY • Day 1: Soft reminder, retry button • Day 3: Urgent notice, alternate payment method link • Day 5: Last attempt before suspension • Day 7: Restart subscription with 3-day grace period TRACKING Monitor save-offer acceptance rate, re-activation rate post-cancellation, payment recovery rate.
About this skill
Customers leave through your cancel button, and more leave quietly when their cards fail. Your fixes so far may have been a blanket 50% discount and a stock 'payment failed' email. This skill rebuilds both: one honest offer matched to each cancel reason, payment recovery that reacts to the decline code, and a flow that stays clear of cancel laws.
What it does
- Separates voluntary churn from involuntary churn and fixes the cheaper one (failed payments) first
- Designs a cancel flow of 3-4 clicks: a reason survey, one save offer matched to the reason, a clear confirmation and a follow-up email
- Builds an offer matrix: downgrade, pause, time-boxed discount, routing to a person, or no offer, with limits so customers can't farm discounts
- Plans retries by decline type (soft vs. hard), with card-expiry warnings, a grace period and read-only fallback
- Writes final dunning email copy that links straight to a card-update page
- Measures saves at 90 days instead of offer clicks, with a holdout group and discount-cost math
What you get
A ready-to-build churn plan: screens and copy for the cancel flow, an offer matrix, a retry and dunning timeline with emails, legal flags, and the metrics to track. If you only need one piece, such as the emails or a review of your current flow, you get just that piece.
Best for
Founders, growth leads and lifecycle marketers at self-serve SaaS, membership, app or subscription-box businesses who bill monthly or annually by card and want churn down without dark patterns.
SKILL.md preview
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name: subscription-cancel-flow-and-dunning
description: Designs subscription cancel flows with save offers matched to the cancel reason, plus failed-payment recovery (pre-dunning, retries based on decline type, grace periods, dunning emails). Sizes the work to the voluntary/involuntary churn mix and checks it against cancel-law limits. Use when the user says "build our cancel flow", "write a dunning email sequence", "what save offer should we show", "we have too many failed payments", "our churn is killing us", "customers keep canceling right after the first month", "my payment retries aren't recovering anything", "is our cancel page a dark pattern".
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