How UX writing can be a game-changer in fighting churn

Yuval Keshtcher

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Founder

of

UX Writing Hub
EP
46
Yuval Keshtcher
Yuval Keshtcher

Episode Summary

Today on the Churn.fm, we have Yuval Keshtcher, the founder of UX Writing Hub.

In today's episode, we talked about the art and science of UX writing, and how it can be a game-changer when it comes to improving conversion, reducing churn and increasing revenue.

Yuval also shared how companies can use metaphors to maintain copywriting consistency, his step by step process in helping companies enhance their copy, and a real-life case study of a previous client of his.

Lastly, we also talked about how using shady tactics and dark patterns can damage your brand and customer retention, andy why copywriting is the first step of reducing churn.

As usual, I'm excited to hear what you think of this episode, and if you have any feedback, I would love to hear from you. You can email me directly on Andrew@churn.fm. Don't forget to follow us on Twitter.

Mentioned Resources

Highlights

Time

What is UX writing? 00:03:32
How should early-stage startups put their resources to UX writing 00:05:12
How UX writing has a direct impact on revenue 00:06:08
Why hiring UX writer can be a game-changer 00:08:53
Yuval’s process of working with clients 00:10:40
A specific example of how UX copywriting help improve a company’s revenue 00:15:03
Using metaphors to achieve consistency in copy 00:20:51
How do you strike a balance between functionality and personality in your copy? 00:26:56
How to go about testing and experimenting with copy 00:29:01
How Yuval would help a company turn its' churn problems around 00:32:02
Why you should never use dark patterns in your product 00:37:32

Transcription

Andrew Michael
Hey, Yuvak, welcome to the show.

Yuval Keshtcher
Thanks for having me.

Andrew Michael
It's a pleasure. It's good to have you on the show. For the listeners. Yuval is the founder of UX writing hub is the official one stop shop for online UX writing resources providing in depth education articles, workshops, courses, product team training and more for UX riders and product teams from all over the world. After creating the largest UX writing discussion group called microcopy was actually our first came across you will On Facebook, he collaborated with your ex riders from Google, Amazon, PayPal fiber, NASA wicks and more job for the first ever UX writing course. So my first question for you is evil. What is UX writing? And why should we care about it? Or it so we use writing is basically the craft of creating copy for digital interface. And that's only part of the crafts. Basically, what a UX writer expected to do is to work in a product team, and as more or less a product designer, and to own the responsibility of the copy of their web interface or the application or all of the digital experiences basically. And thats related to the company and its various between the sizes of the company so as you know, we're like, like many different roles is the smaller the companies the more expensive very responsibilities So basically, the whole village between the sizes of the companies. So if it's Google so they could have someone that is Amazon, you excited for very specific part of the product or only for the Google Maps or, like five different writers working on the ways Apple, Google. But if it's a smaller company, it's not Google. So probably that you expect to be in charge of. So it, it can be in charge of certain marketing aspects, emails, transactional emails, and stuff like that.

So they're all various, quite of a thing, obviously, depending on the size and scale of the business. And what is sort of like the main goal of a UX writer, like if you had to pick like two or three things that your extract is always trying to do, what would you say like is their purpose in a company?

Yuval Keshtcher
So basically, I would say that like a UX designer, or product designer, the idea is to connect and create a bridge between the business goals and the user needs. So at the end of the day, There's must be some kind of a balance between the business goals and the user needs when the goal in total is to create just a better user experience for the digital product or that company. For example, if I work for Dropbox as a Dell, so my two focal points would be, okay, how can we bring more subscribers to pay for our services at Dropbox? And also, how can we reduce the first frustrations of the users I would connect between the business goals and the user needs?

Andrew Michael
So this is something as well, I think when it comes to UX writing and mentioned in a previous episode, that it's often overlooked. And you mentioned obviously, depending on the size and scale of the company, you have different focuses, but I know a lot of times like in the early days for startups, it normally like copy and UX writing is almost the last afterthought it's let's design the screens and then last minute it might be an engineer even or a product designer who Putting together copy? What are some of the things that you would suggest to companies who want to get started in this practice who want to get better at sort of introducing UX writing with into their process? What are some of the things that startups can do with limited resources to get a focus and improve the UX writing?

Yuval Keshtcher
So that's a really good question, even for you to design as was always something that it's very hard to, to persuade for a company. And you know, many companies that say 20 years ago, you would tell them, Hey, we need to improve the user experience product. And they be they wouldn't understand exactly what are we talking about. But now we have the we had digital revolution. Everybody have mobile devices, and many different digital experiences. And it's pretty obvious that the better the experiences of your digital products, so the more money that your company will make, eventually, it's not the only parameter its own. So we related to the quality of the technology, of course, and also marketing efforts and sales efforts, and so on and so on. But at the end of the day, if you will compare two apps solely on the frustration or the amount of joy that people produce from them, so the app that produce more joy or less frustration for the user, would probably be more successful. 10 years ago, we had to import a designer, by the way by my I product designer, I'm a big with my background used to be a graphic designer. So I said that five minutes ago, we had to say, to companies that they need to invest in is expensive, we had to promote it. And now much more people understand the value of UX design, because it's kind of obvious to many people now. So UX writing is having the same framework. Now it's a relatively new and rural. Not a lot of people understand the value of it, but then the end of the day when your app Communicate much better with your users. Your success of your app is going to skyrocket. You're going to get more subscribers, more paying users. And and all of the what I want to say is that the copy of the interface have a direct impact on the amount of money that the business could make.

Andrew Michael
Yeah, I think what you're saying is well, in terms of like a practice of user experience, design, and a focus on that experience, definitely has evolved over time where in before, like you used to see some standard apps that had these amazing experiences. And nowadays, it's sort of like a given like, you're not going to use a tool unless the experience is amazing. And I can see the same thing happening now with UX writing, like really not much thought given to it like 510 years ago, and slowly, slowly, more companies are realizing the value of having a really good internet communication strategy when it comes to their app and educating their users. With depende points, because I think at the end of the day, you can have a really slick UI. But if your app is not communicating to users in the right way, if you're not guiding them to the key actions that they need to be taking, and there's if your app is filled with ambiguity or not clear direction, I think you're definitely going to struggle in the next five to 10 years to compete.

And I would just want to have a comment on that, because that was a really great remark. So probably right now, business owners or product managers or people from different tech companies saying to themselves, all right, so we've heard you guys, it makes a lot of sense. So we just hired a copywriter. And, you know, we would just put copy into a product and everything's going to be fine, right? Yeah. And

tell us why we're sampling. Why it's not gonna

it's not the same so it's not the same thing. So what I like to compare it is like having a expressways like using iPhone for the first time until you use it. You don't know that you need one But once you work with the dedicated you excite them. It's like a game changer because that person will not only create nicer copy in your interface, they will do user research, they will understand how to create and how to communicate a message in context. So let's say that they will just break all of the user flow of signup process or even canceling of subscription process. And they will just communicate it in a better way that it will increase conversions or reduce churn, and all of that beautiful things that you need for a business.

Yeah, I've seen this happen so many times where to just be like, hey, let's try and bring another writer in. But there is a definite skill when it comes to UX writing, because the challenge with UX writing is while it's not the number of like, every word you put on the screen is precious, I think, and you need to be at the one time, make sure that things are really, really clear and explaining to users but at the same time, you need to be cautious of real estate a lot of times as well. And being able to communicate messages in like the most succinct manner that it's crystal clear to the end user what needs to be done. I think it's an art and a science as well, like it's not sort of this long form copywriting that people might write a blog post. So somebody who might write excellent blog post is not always going to equate to become an excellent UX writer. You talked a little bit about the process. And let's sec, maybe you want to explain to us the practice of how you would go about and you gave an example of the exit flow for a SaaS business and let's say like a week, somebody comes to you and says, I have this exit flow now. I want to try and reduce churn and I wanted to give an experience to my users as they're exiting the what would be your process involved? How would you go about sort of deciding which pages to get started with that? What would be the copy that would be going And maybe you want to run us through like a process of a content to come through and how you work with them.

Yuval Keshtcher
All right, that's a really good question and and have a few different point of views to this answer. So if they have me, for example, as a dedicated in house UX writer as part of the product team, so I'm just I would just go into the end walk with the team of the product designers understand, you know, just communicate with Everyone listen to everyone understand the pain points, and what is the main focus right now and if the main focus is on exit intent or reduce churn, so to try to understand what is the current messaging that we have today, I will probably look on on how competitors are doing it, how other people are doing it. I will try to find a way to you know, maybe speak with the users so we can use the whole jar to collect feedback. For example, or and We can just, you know, being in relationship with our users and send them an email, send a questionnaire. And we can also and this is a trick that me like, and I called conversation mining is like, you can just find where your users are online. So for example, if you are working in a company, that's great dog sitting. So I would go to Facebook groups of people that are dog sitters. And they would say like, what kind of language they use, which kind of jargon which kind of words they use to communicate with each other, and I will have some kind of a, you know, like a sheet or air table, that I just document all of those words in an organized way. So I know I could use them after and then it's time to do the right thing. You know, it's try to understand what is the technical limitations and, you know, speak with the developers. understand if a button editor a piece of text you should be you can because they I think to do as a developer, but you do need to also speak with the designers that like, it's okay to put text over there or to add text or to edit text over there. And yeah, now it's really depends on you know, you can do work now the content audit for the current flow, understand what is not working and then suggest some kind of a way to improve it. And then you can use the data humans after to just optimize it. So this is an example. Another example if I'm a freelance you excited, or if I'm coming as an agency, which is also something that I did for a few clients. So what I will do, it's not that different, but I will probably invest one week just to learn this client from inside out because you don't have the privilege to work in the product team. So you must do your research you must feel you must learn the people of the product in it's a really a game of communication in for this So if you're freelance to excite them, it foods to work on the way that helps you to communicate the best with your client.

Andrew Michael
Yeah, that makes sense. Also, like what you really said around so the trick when it's going online to try and see the language that the users are using, or the language that your potential customers are using, because I think this is like a big problem that a lot of startups make is, sometimes they get too technical in their copy. And they forget to empathize and the figures actually humans at the end of it and what you might call a platform or a service, or software, it's actually a solution to people's problems and being able to communicate in a language that your customers use, I think is a super powerful and valuable skill to master.

Yuval Keshtcher
Right? Because at the end of the day, you want the platform to truly human to the other side. So if for example, you write an ad for 18 Nope. No which kind of language they use, and you know the research you just don't know how to create conversation.

Andrew Michael
Yeah, so talking about sort of like working as, as an agency freelancer, you mentioned, you've done that for a few clients, like, is it particularly one case that you can speak to where you use UX writing, and then had a big impact on the business when it maybe came to engagement or usage of a specific service?

Yuval Keshtcher
So that's a really good question. And there was a project two and a half or two years ago that I worked with a company named SodaStream for Israel. And it's pretty well known in Israel and also in the world. Thank you. Yeah. What scraping sort of devices and buts about it like you by sort of streaming you have in your home and sparkling water. And there is a thing with the device is that you have guests that you use to operate this device, and the gas is not limited and it's usually a One or two months, you can't use the device anymore if you don't have enough gas. So basically, the company hired me to build some kind of a new feature for their e commerce website. So we had to redesign and re and just create a strategy of the whole ecommerce experience of sort of stream. It was a huge project because it was for like, I think like 20 different countries and there was a lot of data scattered and we had to like transition up systems. It was complicated for many different technical ways. But what I was in charge of was to create a subscription feature. Many people were too lazy to buy that, you know, the gas and they just didn't use the product anymore because they were too lazy to just go outside, go to Walmart and buy. So we tried to build some kind of a feature and subscription feature. People would just get gas to their doors. Every month, and then there's going to be all recycling and recycling aspects for it. And that was pretty complicated to communicate like how exactly I'm going to start it when, exactly I'm going to get those packages, and how it's going to work. So that was a huge challenge. We were excited for around six months on the whole website, but that was the main focus of the website. It was like the, you know, the main conversion that we worked on, because we want to just make more people choose the subscription feature, because it's like, you just pay a month in the company. You know, the importance of subscription, I'm sure. Yeah. And, yeah, it was a challenge. And we interviewed different design agencies to create the strategy that we planned. There was a lot of challenges about like the wording should we use the word cylinder or should we use the word gas or should we use the picture of a gas or a picture of person holding the gas or there's There was also a lot of dissension engine. And also, like we wanted to just show the process also how it's going to work. So it was like a three step process, it was really important to communicate it well. So people will actually use it. So I just know that once it was implemented, it was really like it was a huge success. And I didn't have the chance to work with them afterwards. So I don't have the actual numbers of like, churn rates and how like, it went over time, the number that I got about the convergence of the new website, and that's what I received from the Boston had back then was 51% increase in the conversions of the store, and that we've created the e commerce store. But that's only according to two I just like to call him and I really had haven't had a chance to look on the numbers myself. Yeah. And that was a pretty successful project. And it opened me for many other, you know, successful, successful, but many other like, really interesting new directions. And it was a really nice case study. That's like a Was it a great leg up to my career?

Andrew Michael
Yeah. And I can see like how the value they have really strong and good UX copy can make a big, big difference because you introducing a new service into an existing business, you actually introducing a new subscription revenue for the business as well. It's not something that customers have been familiar with doing in the past, it's something new to them, it can actually make an improvement for that ongoing engagement of the product as well. So you're not only creating a new revenue stream by having this good copy and putting together this package, but then you're also encourages ongoing usage, and the power of copy. So I think there's really a key in getting that message across when people understand a that this problem is exists and be that now you have the solution that solving it for them as well.

Yuval Keshtcher
Exactly and how you communicate it in the product page. And how you make people to go first to the subscription option and not to the actual store is like a lot of different optimization that you try to lead the users. Yeah, in a way that will benefit the business, as I said, connecting between business goals and user needs.

Andrew Michael
Yeah. And you mentioned something as well. That was interesting. I wanted to get your input on to is, you mentioned like the concept, we didn't know if we should call it a cylinder or gas or holding and you had specific terminology. So my question is, like, I think a lot of times within startup sec. We have specific terminology that's for our business, but there's multiple different ways of saying things. And what do you do advise us some sort of like best practices like an example being like, do we call our users users visitors are their customers are the trial users, there's always sort of this confusion in terms of terminology specific to your app and how you communicate and then how this is used throughout your documentation and explaining and what are some best practice you see when it comes to sort of like the copy governance, if you want to call it that, to ensure that everybody's using the same language and you communicating the same way to your customers?

Yuval Keshtcher
So this is a brilliant question, and I'm really glad you put it up. And I wasn't expected to actually ever. I never felt that I will answer this question because I didn't. It's like in my prayer, but I never talked about it. But there is a huge impact. In this case for metaphors. It's crazy. For example, there's a company named zests and Israeli company, they give inspiration for people. Yeah. And you probably I don't know if you know them and they work with her job sometimes as well. Yeah, they just Promote content to top market is by top marketers. And they call their users the tribe. Okay, so this is a very interesting metaphor. And like, their users know that they are the tribe, and all of the people in the company knows that they are the tribe. And just pretty interesting metaphor. Because when you use metaphor that way, it's really easy to, you know, to understand, like the context of another example of, for example, l table. So a table is really good product and it's like, I really like using it. It's like machines and spirits. And they have some kind of, you can build the table from scratch or you can use some kind of

Yuval Keshtcher
pre made table. Okay, let's say that you want to build uneditable a CRM. So do you have like a pre med CRM that you can use? The way did they call the whole, like, place of creation of those premium templates would be a galaxy table galaxy. It's really, really fascinating. And you think what you have in the galaxy, so that's a really interesting copy. Zapier, for example. It's an app that integrate between two SAS tools. So you can connect with your Google Sheets and your type form, for example, through Zapier. So and when you want to create an app, so first of all zap is a metaphor, because it's this app. It's like a you know, zip zap. And if you want to have a premade integration, so you need to go to the recipes, and then you find the recipe. So it's all metaphors recipe. The Galaxy, the tribe, it's all metaphors, but it's really understand that let the users and the people in the company understand terminologies that are I'm in the connect people, you know?

Andrew Michael
Yeah, I like that as well. And Stephanie moves away from sort of like the complexities of if you had to try and imagine like the direct translation of what Zapier does with the Zapier recipes, like I think the terminology that should come up with would be a lot more complicated and less, less easy to understand. I like that metaphors. exec.

Yuval Keshtcher
So metaphors is a great example. And there is a really nice article by john Seto is a product designer at Dropbox used to be rhetoric from getting it wrong, and have a complete article about metaphors. And that article blew my mind. So I really recommend to read it to the shortlist if possible.

Andrew Michael
Cool, definitely do that. And the one thing that I think that just comes to mind does when you said metaphors, I can definitely see how they can be useful. But at the same time, I think sometimes that can potentially be abused to the extent where companies might come up with their own specific terminology for something that's already been done and working well. So something that comes to mind potentially is like likes the like button commonly used terminology used throughout for the most social media. If somebody comes along then and tries to add a new feature and does the same functionality as a Like button everywhere else would you call it a Zapier like a happy as that's what her like just an example now then it sort of can also be confusing to some extent where it's like you're taking something that people are already familiar with terminology and trying to make it your own like or make it into metaphor that's relevant to your business could also be dangerous. And as you think,

Yuval Keshtcher
you know, like abusing other terminologies to company is like when you take a solution by one company, and you just copy the same solution to your company and you think it's going to work. So it's not going to work. You actually got a Planning and understanding. And if your last conclusion is that you need to call it a Like button regardless to what Facebook was doing, so call it a Like button. But a, you can just copy a feature and expect it to work as good for you. Because in design incorporating just not going to work, people are not going to appreciate it as well. Try not to abuse copy. And yeah, never use jargon and stuff that people don't get. And just make sure that your clarity is on top of your mind. So the metaphor is not too complicated or something like that.

Andrew Michael
Yeah. And like maybe not reinventing the wheel when it's not necessary as well. Exactly. The other thing as well as sack, I think when we think about like UX copy and some of the experiences, I think sort of delight people is they tend to sort of take a more human approach to their copy and maybe a little bit more playful in some cases. Like when you think about UX writing, sort of how do you strike a balance between like good copy, functional copy, but then also still have a bit of personality, that you don't also maybe go to the extent where you try to be too funny or try to, like add too much personality and then you end up losing, like the functionality side of things sort of, like what is your process? How do you go about thinking about sort of what is the copy that you want to bring to this app or this experience?

Yuval Keshtcher
So it really depends on the effort that you're doing right now. It it really depends on the the project that you have on your plate right now. So there is a chance that there is an error message that no one in the company wrote and you know, you have like maybe less than a day just to understand something quickly how to read it, and you just write it down because you know, it's a very it's like an edge case. And maybe not a lot of people are going to look at it so you wouldn't want to invest all of your time and suffering later. So That one thing. On the other hand, you have like key screens that you want to craft your copy and titanate like a pricing page, for example, you want it to be top notch, you want to make sure that everything is clear. And that you not make any mistakes in the unit to go first of all your gut feeling like everything, if you don't have data, but if you have data, try to walk or so with your data, but also if you have data, also add some gut feeling to the to this too, because sometimes like that, of course, right? But maybe a we make the wrong assumption. So go with your gut feeling, make some kind of new policies, deploy the copy and test it you know, that's what designs are about tested, and optimize it. If something was less good to just change it back. Something was better. Try to use it a little bit more. And Dave, answer your question.

Andrew Michael
Yep, some extension and have a follow up as well then Is that? So? In terms of like the copy, and then the experience and like the experimentation side of things, I think, like when you think of a SAS app, there's a lot of copy being used on like, loads of different pages. What do you do to try and like, ensure that you have consistency? And what are some best practices to make it easy for a UX writer to be able to like, run experiments quickly and test out different copy changes? Are there any special tools that we could look out for us any sort of processes that you've got locked down to, you know, what copy is on which page and then if you make changes, like how that's going to influence things down the line,

Yuval Keshtcher
alright, so

designer, designers had something called design systems that made show like a probably many listeners know about a material design by Google which is a very famous design system, right? And they have the design system is to create a light alignment between all of the design that comes from from Google, for example, similar to that writers have a content standard. Okay. And with content style guides in with design systems, it really depends on the size of the company. If it's small, so you're not going to have probably it would have established content style guide. But if we're talking about companies like Shopify and Google Atlassian The most common example of a open source content standard is MailChimp. So you're going to see how people create some kind of a voice in tone of like how we write arrow is our news. This is our domes are we write for accessibility. And you're very specific on those standards. So my tip for the listeners would be if you're a small company, and you're just building your content style guides, and you want to create some kind of alignment with the rest of the writers everything. Go find other content style guys and take inspiration from them. I created an article called the top quality Guys, so you have a list with all the college target out there, so you can check it out. And if you are working in a big company and you working on a content style guide, so try to, you know, go between all of the writers in your organization and find some kind of a common ground, go to the different screens of the different apps, different products. Try to understand like, what's the rhythm of the copy of those products? and build your own content style guide if you have enough resources to do it?

Andrew Michael
Yeah, very nice. And you gave some really good examples. They will definitely add that in the show notes for people to check out. I'm also a big fan of male chimps one I love it. I think

Yuval Keshtcher
this one is pretty famous. I love their copyleft I don't like their product that much. Personally, don't use it. Surprise. Yeah, but they think that copy is pretty impressive. Like game changing. Impressive.

Andrew Michael
For sure. They managed to nail like a good combination of personality and brand but also functional and Specific next thing I want to sort of sort of ask something I asked everybody that joins the show, is let's have a hypothetical scenario. Now, as a UX writer, you've been offered a new role and you join this new company and you see China retentions not doing well. And you've actually been asked to try and turn things around for this company. What would be some of the things that you're doing the first 90 days to get results?

Yuval Keshtcher
Right? So like, these are a lot of this. So I'm going to have a lot of time, which is great. So basically, I'm going to get all the numbers, okay, see, like, Where is the dropout where people start buying or just when people want to just cancel the service. If it's a big company, there's probably going to be some talented data scientists in the company. So I will ask for some, you know, insights about what's working and why and for which company, which country Unless for this, you know, a interesting data, a and then I will try to understand to have some insights about, okay, the sign up to our platform. And now they don't want to use it anymore. So what it could possibly be it could be about the pricing could be about the fact that it wasn't what they were expecting, could be about. They're not they don't need it anymore. So first of all, I will probably create some kind of reform that ask anyone that is about to cancel, like, what's the reason that are you canceling and I'm sure that them. This is not new, and many people know about this trick already, probably. So that's what I will do. And then I will get remote that I bought the reason that they have like this turn. And let's say that it's about the fact that it's too expensive. So what was wasn't clear about the fact that that's going to be the price or what makes our value proposition so low, that is not communicated well in the pricing page it is people ask for their money back afterwards or they asked to remove it at some point. And so I would just look on different use cases collect data and make sure that the conscious decisions in and keep it clear as possible so people know exactly what they're getting. So we could reduce the churn. So probably they expect some one thing and they got something else I will try to understand what didn't met their expectations and see how can I use copywriting in order to meet with their expectations even before they sign up for the first place?

Andrew Michael
Yeah, I think that's super, super powerful message there. And it's definitely something that's very often overlooked, as well as in terms of like the promise fits as well. When you talk about what you're promising your customers in terms of your copy and their understanding that maybe on the pricing side of things, what the value prop is and actually what you deliver at the end of the day. If it's not aligned, and you're not doing a great job there of communicating that value, like you've really lost before you started. You mentioned something as well that we chatted about. Just before the show and maybe it was something that you did but in terms of sort of the cancellation flow and reducing churn from people actually want to get their money back on returns like this is something that you mentioned that it happened within your business maybe you want to let us know elaborate a little bit about that.

Yuval Keshtcher
Sure. So basically, like any business in the UK's reading hub, the company and we sell we have a lot of content that we deliver to our audience news that free stuff and the job board and there was a big community essence inside of it. And we said courses in To be honest, in the last like we had already like, give four different course course. And we managed to reduce the amount of refunds to zero percent, which is pretty impressive. So The numbers of people in each course is not that high. It's not like thousands. It's not even hundreds. But I think that the fact that we just communicate really well what's going to happen in the course what is the outcome, and show a lot of credibility during that process, you know that we are collaborating with big companies, and that we know what we're talking about maybe hiring and more mentors with more experience in the field of UX writing and, and we managed to sell and we call it like a content product like a course in a way that makes people very satisfied because in the first courses, we did have a few refunds, and now we don't have them anymore. But to be honest, we do have use case where people are saying that they wasn't expecting discourse to be that intensive, and they're too busy. So they just asked us to move them to the next course. So this is also a lesson that I learned. And I'm trying to implement it. And to communicate the fact that this is a an intensive course. And like, that's exactly how it works. You need to communicate, so people will know what they receive. And I think that would help us to reduce the, the churn or refunds, or how do you call it? I would have to call it but two very, very, very small percentage.

Andrew Michael
Yeah, it's you mentioned a few different things. I think it's valuable. And it's sort of really, it came down to that promise fit versus like, what you were selling on your website versus what the course and the actuality was, and realizing that using social proof, using gaining credibility by introducing new mentors to the program, really was one serving sort of that social proof side but to adding value to it. And then I think it just shows like a really good understanding And listening to your customers as well. So, at the time of asking for refunds and churning, you get a good picture of what their pain points are. So it's a great example of sort of using good copy to make sure that to begin with, you're making really, really clear statement and clear message of what to expect. And then when they do get started, like there's no sort of going back and saying, well, this is not what I was expecting. It's like you've you've made it black and white for them.

Yuval Keshtcher
Of course, and I have another tip, which is, let's say that you did receive the refund or someone that want to unsubscribe from your services, for example. So don't be a douche bag about it. Many says companies don't understand that they can't put dark veterans when people want to leave their services. So don't put out veterans. It's not ethical. It's not cool. When someone asked me for a refund, I just give it to them. I make sure that they're like, everything is good, that you know, as long as it's to the today and agreement that we had before But I always give them the best attention that they get that I could so it wouldn't happen again because nobody likes lecturing refunds when they it's also about like, even if they decide not to get your product right now or to stop there might be a class in the future so don't leave a bad taste in their mouth

Andrew Michael
just don't be a douche bag.

Yuval Keshtcher
Yeah. Be nice to many SaaS companies when we're talking about the unsubscribers now Yeah, they're like hiding the Cancel button hiding down subscription button. me to go to Settings profile. And then you have like a pretty poor design for the fact that it's going to unsubscribe me. A lot of SEO tools just charge you automatically without even like asking you first or like it's kind of annoying. Many many low cost airlines also like yeah, from this is really bad for a turn game.

Andrew Michael
pusher, and this is what you told me about in terms of dark patterns just for the listeners is when you really specifically tried to engineer and make it difficult for users to cancel your service, or to trick them into taking specific actions that may be beneficial for you, but not for them. So I totally agree with you like, don't be a douche bag if you building a source products, like make it easy for your customers to do what they want, because ultimately, it's very, very short term thinking when it comes to these patents because you might like in the short term, decrease churn or increase revenue, but in the long term, you damaging your brand, you're damaging word of mouth, and in a subscription business, like word of mouth and retention is going to be your biggest driver for growth. So until your community that you know just help each other out, that's you must invest all of your efforts in the community and that people will be happy with your services. Absolutely. Well, you know, it's been a pleasure having you on the show today. Is anything last thing that you'd like to leave the listeners with like hockey Keep up to speed with your work. How can I learn a little bit more about the practice of UX writing?

Yuval Keshtcher
So first of all, thank you for having me. It was a blast and I can't wait to listen to it and really learn from it because it was really great. About the reading hub, we have a weekly newsletter, every Wednesday at 10am sharp, everybody gets the newsletter. So you can sign up on our website, I can also add a link and send it to you. So you will edit in the show notes. We have a podcast This one is by month, twice a month, we send writers in tech podcast, you can look it up if you want me to listen and listen to me interview UX writing industry leaders. And you can also try our free course in the website or get our free course in the website which many people said at the beginning to value or go to our blog as well. We have many great resources for you

Andrew Michael
Awesome. Well, thanks again for joining the show and wish you best of luck now going forward.

Yuval Keshtcher

Thank you. Thank you. It was a pleasure.

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Yuval Keshtcher
Yuval Keshtcher
About

The show

My name is Andrew Michael and I started CHURN.FM, as I was tired of hearing stories about some magical silver bullet that solved churn for company X.

In this podcast, you will hear from founders and subscription economy pros working in product, marketing, customer success, support, and operations roles across different stages of company growth, who are taking a systematic approach to increase retention and engagement within their organizations.

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