Westminster eForum: Priorities for digital competition and growth in the UK

Guy, who's the vision director for customer success, for recurly, over to you.

Yeah. Thanks, Timothy. I just want to check. I'm sharing my screen. So I'm not -- It's all working.

-- my slides all showing as they should.

Yeah. Create to be here and, thanks for the intro, there, Tim. As you said, I'm Guy Mayers from Recurly Regional Director of Customer Success.

And then for those of you who may not have heard of the curly, we are subscription experts. We work with three thousand global customers, and kind of our mission is to make, the whole subscription service industry, better really for our customers and also for consumers.

So it's important that we help our customers be compliant through the software platform that we provide. But at the same time, give them the tools help them scale and and maximize their business and the lifetime value of their consumers. So Hopefully, we'll bring, a a slightly different perspective as well today, looking at some of the consumer issues that are there when it comes to, you know, competition and consumer rights in the digital space.

We have done a lot of research lately, and I'm gonna share some stats today, anything just just a transparency, anything I do share.

Is from a survey that we conducted just in May, and there were about six and a half thousand active global subscribers who, filled out the survey over a thousand from the UK, and we wanted to really get under the skin of, consumer demands in in this space. We also have access to, a lot of data, so thought leadership and, and trying to bring out the best practice for our industry is really important.

To us.

So I think, you know, from our perspective, the scrutiny on consumer rights and competition is really important right now, particularly in subscriptions. It's a significant and growing sector, as I think we know, the average amount spent in the UK per subscriber is forty nine pounds a month from our survey. So significant amounts of money particularly at the moment. But it's also growing. So we estimated about, you know, forty four million subscriptions will have been added within the last twelve months alone, and I think others other research, not by Rick Early has shown that when people look at cutting back on costs in a times like this, it's actually subscriptions that they keep for longer. They might sooner stop going out or spending so much on entertainment outside the home, but they wanna keep their subscriptions particularly when it comes to streaming services and so on. So very timely to be having the discussion today.

And in terms of the bill, specifically, I know it's it's come up a few times today, panelists, really about finding a balance between protecting consumers, as well as allowing businesses to thrive. At the same time. Now we've we've definitely seen a lot in the press lately, around the bill in light of some bad practices within the subscription industry. And obviously recognize that some things do need to change.

I think even from a personal level, we probably all had experiences could be improved. When it's come to subscriptions, I was talking to my wife a couple of weeks ago looking at her bank statement and trying to understand who which of us signed up for this subscription, and do we still require it? And how would we go about canceling it? And it's quite a difficult process sometimes to to follow that through.

So completely support the fact that we need to start looking at how we can protect consumers.

But I would say, you know, there is a a a two way process here. There's there's also certainly some very savvy consumers, the signing up to services that are looking to maximize free content challenge payments for services that they have used. We see that too. They consume content and then maybe cancel without having to pay. So I think we need to, as I said, find that find that balance because subscriptions are really important to building sustainable long term businesses for our customers, allowing them to have regular cash flow and innovation that follows I think if we hit companies too hard, it could ultimately hit the consumers. They could end up losing out on choice and and also paying, kinda, like, a bit more.

One of the interesting, elements of the bill that we've that we've looked at is the fourteen day calling off period. And I think, you know, that makes sense, especially for people that maybe have felt that they've stumbled into signing up for a and maybe decided it wasn't quite what they were looking for. So great to have that cooling off period, but I think at the same time, it could open up the ability for people to gain the system by subscribing early consuming lots of content in in two weeks and then cancelling without paying. Obviously, that would hit the business is quite hard.

There's a lot of trialing that goes on already with subscription, so people offer a free week. So how, you know, there's a question of how that would fit if we had a week's trial and then the two week calling off period. You could be soon getting up to nearly a month of the free content and maybe be able to cancel without restriction. So it's worth thinking about what happens if people have really consumed during that trial period, and it goes a step further when you think about subscriptions to physical goods, without a subscription, if you bought a shirt and you wore it a few times, you want to take it back within two weeks. Obviously, you wouldn't be able to do that.

We we see subscriptions for all sorts of things including physical goods like food box, you know, what if you'd signed up? And a few boxes delivered. Consume them, but then wanted to cancel after fourteen days and get your money back. So I think the calling off period is is great. I think evil with that we should consider consumers paying for what they use, but they're making it easy for them to cancel after that.

Another key element that comes up in the bill is obviously communications, transparency, frequency of contact, with consumers. And, we saw in the press recently Disney who just to know are not not a customer of ours, but they made the point of sending out too many messages they feel could lead to notices actually being ignored by consumers.

When we asked in the survey, subscribers kind of how much contact they wanted.

They they did kind of indicate that the majority would rather not have too many messages, from their subscription company. I think one in three wanted once a month, and that was the most popular answer, in fact, nearly twenty percent didn't want regular contact once they'd signed up for something. They just wanted ad hoc communications as needed, and the vast majority at ninety two percent were were kind of happy that frequent communications would not make them feel more valued. So happy just to hear from the businesses as they needed to do.

So it's probably a balance.

I know the the essence of it is is positive that if someone's got a subscription, they're not using, and we should be reminding them perhaps there's a balance to be considered there for, for people that have signed up for something not used it. We should be encouraging businesses to contact them.

But that said, I think the overriding essence of of the bill will be supported by the industry, in my role in customer success, we're working with some of those large customers we showed at the start are ready to move friction throughout the subscription journey.

That would be clearer information at sign up. Also at renewal and also making it easy to cancel, if as if you want to. And we've seen businesses we work with really focused on that transparency at the beginning of the sign up flow, really spelling out, you know, if you start your trial today, you would get an email reminder on this day, at that point, if you wanted to continue to stop paying or you could cancel. And and that transparency, kind of, on the website, on the sign up page, is actually driven more people to sign up. So I know there's gonna always be tension areas between, supplies and consumers, but I think one area where is joint benefit is being clear when purchasing it. It's it's definitely good for a consumer to know what they're signing up for, and we've seen it also improve results. For our customers and their KPIs.

There's already systems within our technology that allow mandates to be followed. One example is the Mastercard mandate that's already in play. So people signing up via Mastercard if they're joining a subscription that's over six months, then it's already mandated that there should be emails going out a few days before there renewal with clear options to cancel.

And we have that up and running, and and people are using that. So I think it's, you know, the more that we can do for technology, the better.

Already mentioned it before, but I know another key theme. It's almost the idea that it should be as easy to cancel as it is. To sign up, which I think is great. We've seen again in the press quite recently, Amazon who have changed their cancellation flows around prime.

There was, you know, coverage around it being very, very complex, lots of clicks, lots of pages, lots of options before you could actually cancel. So it's really important that it's made easier. And again, that's important to consumers from the survey. Maybe eighty percent are more likely to join some some subscription if they know that they can cancel easily.

But I think another point that's worth considering is if, you know, somebody thinks they want to cancel, making sure they understand all the options at that, at that stage. So pausing is another good route or even potentially downgrading, to a different version of the subscription. And again, it's a key topic with customers we work with giving full transparency at the point of cancellation because there is a risk that people may cancel now and then face higher prices if they went to sign up in the future. So that transparency should also go simple cancellation, but also all of the options at that point and also considering offboarding, we know that if it's easy to cancel, we don't wanna push any other issues down the line, by it being difficult to then access any, in a B2B environment, any assets you've built up and, you have, you should have access to after cancelling.

We need to consider what happens after the cancellation, I think, within the bill as well, make sure off boarding is is really seamless.

So I think just to summarize, whatever the bill mandates, there will be some pressure put on suppliers, and I think the technology needs to be there not only in subscriptions, of course, but across the industry to support that.

To make sure that innovation can continue to flourish.

And, obviously, that's why it's great for us to be part of this discussion so we can be well placed to, simplify compliance for our customers, but also any customers looking to enter the market.

And I I've shared a few stats today.

We've had done a couple of recent surveys to the industry and also consumers, and it's been really positive the response and not of curiosity. We're looking to build out a coalition for best practice, in these areas and gather as many perspectives as possible. So please do contact me and and reach out to Rick early if you'd like to join the conversation. We're keen to keep that going and and build Yeah, some really good, best practice around topic.