The breakup went badly.
She wanted to end her relationship with Stately Men, a subscription clothing service. In the succinct email, she let them know and tried to thwart any suggestion that they stay together.
I would like to cancel my subscription for (NAME AND ADDRESS). I do not want to pause or skip months. I want to entirely cancel the subscription.
Please confirm the cancellation.
Thanks!
Within a minute, Agent AI Bot (yes, that was the name attached to the email) replied. It wanted something before it would let her go:
To process your cancellation, we kindly ask for any feedback on why you would like to cancel your subscription.
Your feedback is valuable to us in improving our services. Once we receive your response, we will proceed with the cancellation request.
She had been through this kind of breakup before, so she knew Agent AI Bot was likely just playing with her — pretending to honor her request while demanding a reason why so it could persuade her not to go. Still, she responded truthfully:
I find it very hard to exchange items — they must be exchanged within five days, and I must email you before making any returns.
Sometimes, I get no reply when I email you. I don't want to continue this subscription.
If Agent AI Bot really wanted helpful feedback, mission accomplished. But no, Agent AI Bot, as she expected, acted duplicitously. Her “helpful” explanation prompted another plea to stay.
But now, Agent AI Bot had been replaced by Stately Concierge to do the bidding. Though the email address was the same, the sender’s name switched to something more human — Stately Concierge — and the email was signed by a human first name.
Stately Concierge informed her that if customers ask, the company can extend the exchange timeframe. It also offered a 20% discount and expedited shipping fees paid for the next three exchanges if she stayed. The message concluded with:
Let me know if this works for you, and we'll take care of the rest.
She didn’t reply right away, and 18 hours later, the brand took the silence as the final signal she wasn’t interested. Stately Concierge sent an email accepting the relationship was over (bold is mine):
We hope this email finds you well. We attempted to contact you regarding your cancellation request but were unsuccessful in reaching you.
With that said, while we are very sorry to see you go, I can confirm that your account has been cancelled after what will now be considered your final renewal on (date). If you ever wish to start up service with us again, please feel free to reach back out. Take care!
Even when confirming the breakup, Stately Concierge blamed the customer for not following up. Though irritated, she was relieved to have the relationship over (and to get to share the debacle with her friends).
Marketing success gets hurt by poor customer service content
Stately Men isn’t unique in taking steps to prevent customers from stopping its service, and I get why. It’s at least five times more expensive to get a new customer than to keep an existing one, according to a 2014 article in Harvard Business Review.
And still, so many brands ignore the power of marketing in their customer service.
What if the content team got involved proactively and partnered with customer service for a content strategy? The investment could lead to impressive — and measurable — results. It could also reduce customer support costs (9% of B2B marketers in CMI’s latest research say they’ve helped do that — an encouraging sign for their peers to follow suit).
Oh, and don’t forget to add the PR team, too. Disgruntled customers create some of the worst public relations for a brand. (After all, my friend’s experience led me to write this article.) Happy and satisfied customers do the opposite.
(Stately Men, if you’re reading this, you still have time to prevent your good customer review rating on sites like Trust Pilot from dropping further. Many of your one-star ratings relate to your customer service.)
How to power your customer service with marketing
It’s time to build a two-way bridge between content marketing and customer service. Here’s how to start the construction:
Get real
Walk in the customer’s shoes to cancel your service (or return a product).
Stop one: Go to your company website. How easy is it to find the cancellation or return policy and process? If it doesn’t show up in the index at the footer or a dropdown menu at the top, use your site’s search bar.
Stop two: Type “How can I cancel my subscription at BRAND NAME” into an AI tool like ChatGPT or Gemini.
If your site explicitly explains the process, the tool will likely return the answer. If not, the reply returns generic suggestions, such as “Look for links like ‘My Account,' ‘Subscription,’ ‘Help,’ ‘FAQ,’ or ‘Contact Us.'”
Stop three: Look at those suggested pages to see if the cancellation or return option and/or processes are there. Note where the information is located or if it does not appear on the site.
Stop four: Ask the chatbot on your website. Copy the conversation.
TIP: Most customers expect AI automation when they first interact with a chatbot. So don’t tell them, as Stately Men did in this screenshot, that chat isn’t available, and suggest that the visitor return the next day.
Stop five: Call customer service. Ask them to cancel your account. If they do anything more than say yes, track what they say to dissuade you from canceling and note how long the call takes.
With all the data from these five stops, you can identify opportunities to better address your brand’s cancellation content. In some cases, you may be able to make improvements without anyone else’s approval or input. But in most situations, you’ll need to get customer service involved.
Talk to customer service
If you follow CMI’s content planning advice, you already talk to the customer service team to identify topics for your company’s blog, social media, videos, etc. Consider this an extension of those interactions.
If you don’t regularly talk to customer service, get a meeting on the calendar.
Stop one: Start the conversation by asking, “How can marketing help customer service meet its goals?”
Listen to the answers. They may have similar ideas to yours but don’t have the time or power to implement them. By listening first, you are better positioned to work collaboratively than if you start by telling them everything that needs to be improved.
Stop two: At this meeting or the next, share what you have heard from customers through social media, review sites, etc. Discuss your firsthand experience in canceling. Since you listened to them first, your sharing of this information is more likely to be viewed as contributions from a helpful partner, not a critical outsider.
Stop three: Brainstorm solutions together. Could the FAQ be updated by marketing writers with approval from the customer service team? How could the marketing team work with customer service to rework the content for the email sequence or call scripts to ensure it’s what the brand and customers want? What articles or videos could marketing create to lessen the customer service team’s workload?
Stop four: Put a long-term plan into effect with action steps and measurable goals. Create a customer service content task force, an ad hoc group with members from multiple departments. Meet at least quarterly with a simple agenda:
Revisit action steps to analyze (and celebrate) progress.
Identify new or growing issues seen by customer service.
Share recent customer challenges and trends identified by marketing through online listening and real-life experiences.
Update action steps.
Breakups are inevitable
By collaboratively building a bridge between customer service and marketing, your brand can better get what it wants — customers who have a good experience even if they still cancel their accounts. After all, if they leave happy and if they regret the breakup, they’ll come back to you. And even if they never want to get back together, they haven’t badmouthed you, and you’ll have a much better chance with their friends.
All tools mentioned in this article were suggested by the author. If you’d like to suggest a tool, share the article on social media with a comment.
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