Leadership asks you to make cancelling a subscription harder to reduce churn. How do you respond?
What the interviewer wants to hear
- Understand the business goal and data behind churn
- Explain ethical, legal and brand risks of obstruction
- Propose alternatives: save offers, pause, downgrade, fix churn causes
- Run tests with honest designs and measure long-term effects
- Escalate if asked to break laws
Model answer
I take the goal seriously, since churn hurts the business, but I separate the goal from the tactic. Making cancellation obstructive is a dark pattern. Regulators in the US, EU and UK increasingly require cancelling to be as easy as signing up, and it damages trust, reviews and support costs. So I propose alternatives. An honest cancel flow can offer a pause, a cheaper plan or a relevant discount, presented once and easy to decline. An exit survey tells us why people leave, and those reasons often point to product fixes or onboarding gaps that reduce churn at the source. I suggest testing these options and measuring long-term retention and complaints, not just short-term saves. If I were asked to do something clearly illegal or deceptive, I would escalate rather than build it.
Can you answer it under time pressure?
Take a timed hard round and get scored on every answer.
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