Hi folks. Welcome to subscription sessions. My name is Mary Rosberg. I am with Recurly. Recurly does subscription billing and analytics.
We're going to have a fun conversation today with four people from all over the world, different walks of life. They are subscribers, just like pretty much everyone I know. Everyone's got a subscription for something. And what we want to do today is just dive into what people really want.
With that, we're going to go round robin and have everybody introduce themselves, learn a little bit about where they're from and what they do and that sort of thing. I will kick us off. I'm Mary. I live in San Francisco. I'm I've been with Mercurley for eleven years. I'm a mom. I love the Peloton.
I focus on growth. So I focus on talking with our top customers and how they grow and what helps them drive growth in a subscription economy.
Who would like to go next? How about Mallory? Hi, Mary. Hi, everyone. My name is Mallory.
I was born and raised in Toronto, Canada, spent most of my life in Canada and then moved to the UK just shy of ten years ago. And I now live in the far north of England where the weather was more similar to Canada than the the sunny climate. So of London, which people may or may not agree with me, on. I am now a data scientist in the the public sector.
So I help governments and charities and public service organizations make sure they can use data for their most important decisions and to make the services they provide to communities and to people as good as they can possibly be. Before the data scientist, I was a ballet dancer. So I'm passionate about the arts and like to spend my spare time, not just fiddling around in spreadsheets, but also, going to plays and engaging with the yeah. Arts and culture.
Lauren, you wanna go next? Sure. Hi everyone. My name's Lauren.
I am from Austin, Texas.
I currently work for the Texas a and m school college of medicine in Round Rock, and I'm in the business department. But we assist all medical students through their m two through m four years, getting through medical school and learning all of the wonderful things of medicine. Excellent.
Robin.
Hi everyone. My name is Robin. I'm originally from South Africa, if you can't really tell from my accent, but have been living in London for the past ten years. Not as great weather here that it ends from sunny South Africa. I did just get back from the US though, so I am quite an avid traveler.
I work remotely, so I've had the pleasure of spending a lot of time in Mexico, in the US, in the Middle East, across Europe and Africa, obviously, and and the UK. In terms of what I do for work, I'm a fractional chief revenue officer. So I work with a portfolio of b two b clients and helping them establish their go to market strategies and helping them implement it, mainly focused across the US and the and the UK. And the company that I work for is called The Venturesmiths.
Yeah. I'm a very avid outdoor person and traveler. Enjoy Barry's Boot Camp. That is my massive obsession.
Uh-huh.
Yeah.
Very high intensity. And the latest hobby I've decided to try out in Tenerife from next week is kite surfing.
Alright. You guys have so many talents. It's crazy. Elliot, bring us home on the intros.
Hi, everyone. I'm Elliot. I live in London and was born in London.
I have been to a Barry's class myself. Not many, but I did once wake up at four forty five in the morning to go to a Dua Lipa themed Barry's class, which was which was great fun. And the trains weren't even running, so I had to get a night bus there, which was crazy. But, you know, felt like I'd won the morning, which was great.
I worked for a, a tech startup in the advertising industry called CreativeX. I worked with large advertisers to help them maximize the effectiveness of their of their ads through helping them know more about their own creative data. And in my spare time, I try and stay very active to kind of balance out my large appetite, and I do that by running, swimming, and more recently, playing the game of paddle. And if you don't know about paddle, it's the love child between squash and tennis.
Check it out. It's very good fun.
Awesome. I've already taken notes on things I need to explore.
So let's jump right in. So we're gonna talk a little bit about subscriptions and, and what you like, what you don't like, what you're looking for. We're gonna go down memory lane a little bit around the experiences you've had with subscription, but let's start off with something super easy and fun. So can you name three different subscriptions that you've been loyal to for a long time?
Robin, why don't you kick us off on that?
Yeah. Sure. So top of that list for me is Spotify, Netflix, and then Google Cloud storage. Oh, yeah.
Yeah. Because all Sri Caitlin. Can you remember I mean, it was a long time ago, and, obviously, these are long term commitments. Do you remember do you remember what made you subscribe?
Spotify, really, it was for the convenience. I mean, commuting in London, just being able to easily listen to music or podcasts, and it's just a really extensive suite of options that are there. So, definitely, it was a convenience thing and just to make those two rides a lot more interesting. Yeah. With Google Cloud, I mean, that was more of, like, out of fear, I guess, that I might lose my phone.
Yeah. And so the con the necessity of well, I guess, the security of knowing that all my videos and photos and memories are constantly being captured on the cloud. So I have that as a backup.
So I think, yeah, that that was that was really the the main reasons for those those two.
That makes sense. Elliot, how about you?
So three of the subscriptions I've been with for a long time that I think I would struggle to be without would be Strava, kind of fitness tracking Yeah.
The New Yorker magazine, and iPassword, which is a password manager.
Mhmm. Mhmm.
And do you remember, you know, when you you had that blink of an eye of, like, oh, I I need this. I want this. I'm gonna I'm gonna click subscribe.
Well, it's funny because none you know, until I until I kind of became aware of them, I didn't know I needed any of them as well.
None of these were being I I I guess kind of the password one probably is the only one that I thought actually, you know, I struggle to remember all of my different passwords from here, there, everywhere.
But Strava was one that I was already using the free version, and, you know, it says, you know, you can compare, you know, your best efforts if you subscribe to that. I obviously want to compare my best efforts and, you know, see how my friends are doing for the same, you know, route Yeah. To work or whatever it might be.
And so that that was the first moment there. The New Yorker, someone I know used to have the magazine, and and when I kind of saw them, they would give me a an old copy.
And I really loved it, and I love having something physical to read. So even though you can go online and and read, you know, many articles for free, I thought having the the physical copy made made me more dedicated to to reading it. Yeah. And the the iPassword manager was a recommendation for a friend, and they said try it out, and I've never looked back.
Interesting.
K. Those are super interesting. I I'm thinking about my my own life as well. It sounds like similar for me, there was an upsell moment. So, like, from the company's point of view, like, from the business's point of view, they're looking for upsell moments. And with Strava, they ease the value, right, of, like, the paid version versus the free version, and they finally hooked you and you click subscribe is is what happened there.
The difference between the free version and we'll probably get into it later. The difference initially between the free version and the paid version was much closer than it is now. At one point, I I tried to cancel for a period. I and then I had a look at the there's nothing left in the free version. I immediately subscribed again.
Yeah. Yeah. That's that's what companies wanna hear about their subscription.
I'm sure it's They look very well.
I know it.
That's that's awesome.
So I have a lot of subscriptions. I'm sure all of you do, and I'm sure you don't really wanna think about how many you have. How do you really evaluate, like, the subscriptions that you do have? And, like, what triggers you to want to evaluate?
Like, is it it's New Year's. I'm doing my budget. Holy moly. I really need to look at this.
What really triggered you to do that evaluation?
Let's start with Lauren.
Yeah. Usually mine comes around around right around Christmas time. I'm always like, okay. What do I have right now that I really probably shouldn't have and haven't used over the last year or haven't used as much?
And that usually comes with how many times have I paused the subscription and and then I go, okay. Maybe we should evaluate and figure out, okay, maybe I don't really need that one, and maybe I could reutilize this other one that I've been really hammering down on this year. So it's usually around Christmas time, New Year's for me, for sure for sure.
Makes sense. Mallory, is that similar for you?
Or Yeah.
I think so. I think the times that I'm most likely to do something is immediately after I've been charged. So when I see the the charge come up, that's the moment where I've really stated myself. Did I get the money out of this in the last thirty days, sixty days year?
I think it's especially stark for those subscriptions where you pay sort of once a year and the amount that comes out when it comes out sort of like it takes your breath away, maybe less so for like the two ninety nine thing, but definitely when they're, you know, a bit, a bit of a, a bigger bit of money.
Yeah. That, that makes total sense. I didn't think about that with the annual, but I should, because that, that is more noticeable on your credit card bill, on your on your whatever bill.
Yeah. Interesting. I I I think for me, I I evaluate subscriptions very, very rarely. It has to be an event that that makes me go down that rabbit hole because I know I'm not gonna like what I find. I'm like, I'd rather be the ostrich with the head in the sand just going, I can't tell you all of it. I'm sure I do. But the occasional large bill will will make me pause and and reinvestigate.
Are there things that you wish your current subscriptions offered, Mallory? Like, when you think about as you do that evaluation, is there something that you wish they had and it was like, well, if they had it, I would probably pay that large annual charge.
Oh, that's a really good question.
It probably depends on what kind of subscription service it it is.
We, I mean, we're all talking about Spotify. I was actually so late to the game on being a person who subscribes to Spotify because I had Apple Music because I was integrated with so many other services.
But actually I was constantly disappointed by, like not having good curated playlist, which I think is a real strength of Spotify. Like it's so aggregated by the community and crowdsource, and it feels like there's a play for all things. So you think a lot of the time it really is about needs being met by the thing that you get specifically from that, that service. And in that case, the features outweighed the convenience of integration.
But there may be other times, especially if two services are really similar where it being connected to other services or part of a wider billing plan that would be more appealing.
But it's definitely not sort of a one size fits all totally willing to abandon convenience and streamlining. If it means getting something that feels like a better offer or one that better suits the way I use the product.
How about you, Lauren? Are there are there features or, like, perks that you wish your current subscriptions actually provided?
I've noticed that the pausing feature is something that I love. So if that's something that can be integrated into some of my other subscriptions would be something I would be what it would be wonderful, to have. But I know that that's difficult probably to integrate into some of more of, like, media type subscriptions rather than, like, box subscriptions.
But that's something It's good, Steve, though.
Right? I mean, I think I know. I think it how how things should be really easy to integrate. Right.
And I have to believe on some levels, it is easy, and companies are deciding very, very strategically if they wanna offer it or not. Right. Right. It's it there there have to be pros and cons for businesses to decide that.
And then there's other businesses where it's so obvious you need a pause. I'll I'll give you an example. I've I subscribe to Sea Forager. Sea Forager is local fresh caught fish, very local, very sustainably caught.
And people go on vacation. And if they go on vacation, that fish is just literally gonna pile up in a in an ice chest, and that's gross.
And sad. You know? It could be redistributed to somebody that really wants that fresh fish, and it's only Right. Fresh for a little while.
So they have to have a pause, and they have to make it really easy, which they do, with a very strong UX. It's just very, very easy to understand, very, like, here's where I'm going away. Sort of like setting your Office. Responder needs to be that easy.
Otherwise, they're stuck with product, and it makes us all sad. So yeah. Yeah.
Let's move on to a little bit around experience, engagement, really the the wow moment.
I'm looking for a time when a subscription surprised you in a good way.
Mallory, you wanna take it through there? Oh, that's a tricky one.
A good thing. Like, I'd like if you can't think of a good one, then I'll take a bad one.
Oh, I can't. That's that's that's that's that's right.
No. I I actually, here's one. I was subscribed to, Beauty Box at one point, and there'd been sort of a a change of ownership of that organization.
And they've sort of paused all subscriptions. And I sort of assumed that the box that I had paid for that I was supposed to get in the past kind of wouldn't happen because it had been a major transfer of ownership and it seemed like quite high drama. And then surprisingly, when they sorted their stuff out and the merger went through, they sent me the box that I should have gotten and an additional gift to, like, thank me for my patience. And I think that was a moment where, like, that really felt like an above and beyond. Like when we subscribe to things, I don't think I, I don't anyway, kind of see that as a really personal customer experience.
You kind of know that you're part of a faceless mass and you kind of get the service that you get. And actually when an organization goes through a major change, you don't expect them to be that on top of it or that grateful for their customers. But I think in that instance, they obviously had like, I don't know, I would say this like a really great backend where they didn't lose track of which customers were owed which things or past experiences. And it just made me feel like, actually, regardless of what other organizational change is going on here, they really have it together as far as, like, their technical infrastructure.
And it may be interested in continuing to say, stay subscribed. So being organized and, Maybe outstripping my expectations of how they were going to respond to something that maybe hadn't been the smoothest experience.
That's super nice. I love that. How about you, Lauren? Do you have any moments where where actually, let me just throw this out to all of you. Does anybody have a really good memory? Like, a really good wow, that really surprised me in a good way.
I I have I have one, and I thought I nearly put this in if if I would have put this in if earlier if I still had the subscription, but I only had it for a couple of years. I had a coffee subscription where, a kind of a small coffee roasters would would send coffee every however long, and you get to decide what level of coffee in a kind of basic, good, really good, very, very, very good. And what would happen is if you were a subscriber, then every three months, you would get sent a sample of their kind of highest premium coffee. That coffee sometimes was actually hard to buy even if you wanted it.
I remember another friend of mine, he went to try and buy it, and he didn't have the subscription. And he's I remember messaging and saying, I tried to get this, you know, fancy geisha coffee. I think it was called. I can't get it.
And I said, oh, they sent me a sample of it. And and I kinda that whole kind of element of getting this little gift that was actually quite important for for them, you know. Yeah. That it was it it's sold out, but they sent a small sample to all of their subscribers.
That felt kind of quite special, and I enjoyed that.
Exclusive is what they did. They made it exclusive just for you, and that that is gonna make anyone feel good. Robin, what about you?
I feel like this is becoming a bit of an ad for Spotify, but because Mallory and I have both mentioned Spotify now.
But when they released their discover weekly playlists Yep. I really loved that because it really was, like, tailored to my music taste. It helped me discover new bands. And then I also started getting these, like, prompts whenever they were performing around London, and that was that was also really awesome because then I get to actually see them live. So that definitely was was one that I absolutely loved. And then Netflix as well when they started doing their their content became more global with different languages.
So I have family in South Africa, and so they watch shows there. And now I can watch I can get access to the shows that they have, and I've been learning Spanish. And so been recommended to watch shows in Spanish. And when they sort of opened up the global content as well from that perspective, that it gives me access to to a lot more than what I previously had. So I'd say those those are my two big, yeah, sort of awesome moments with my subscriptions.
Nice. And those are really great examples of, like, this trend of personalization. I I I don't even think of it as a trend. Similar to Paws, I just feel like all subscription should be offering a deeper level of personalization.
None of us want it to feel creepy, but if it's really good, then suddenly it's like, I don't mind. It's a little creepy, but it's really good. It's a really good recommendation, and it's right up my alley. And they're they're pushing the boundaries like that. I love your example of, like, Spotify and then actually finding out that they're playing, that the band is playing nearby now.
I haven't had that experience, but I hope I do too.
I love personalized analytics as a field of course. As a beta wonky. Yeah. Yeah. But like, as long as we're talking about it, I think that there's a dark side of that as well. And actually, like, if, if I was, you know, creating a personalized experience for someone, you can really get it wrong as well. And so I think it's not worth personalizing unless you can be specific in helpful ways.
Like I'm a female over thirty. That doesn't mean that I'm looking to conceive.
Right.
Or like, it doesn't mean that I'm a parent and maybe I am and maybe I'm not, but I think you have to know that the kinds of things you're recommending are actually relevant and not maybe upsetting or That assumptions.
Yes. You're good.
Yeah.
Exactly.
Personalization is amazing, but not personalization for the sake of personalization. Like, it really has to be the threshold of being provably relevant enough to the customer. Otherwise, disaster. Yeah.
Yeah. The word I the the word I like to kind of use for that is, like, hyper personalization.
Not just personalization, like, hyper personalization.
So I do agree with you, Mallory.
Agreed.
Yeah. Data driven. I mean, data driven just appears everywhere. Of a seventeen year old actually, no, he's eighteen now. And I'm working to make sure that he stays data driven all his life. I know that's a large goal, but, like, it's so important, right, that the data is out there. Let's talk a little bit about how how you learn about new subscriptions and whether you actually look at what your friends are saying about it.
It's been many years now where we talk about influence from your friends, reviews, and all of that being super important to buying decision.
And I'm just curious if that's still something that's relevant for for you, for you all as, like, people on the streets. Like, Elliot, do you look at reviews before you subscribe to something new? Like, if you hear about something, do you actually check reviews?
I think it's very dependent on if there's a trial period. So if there's a trial period, I won't even bother reading a review necessarily. If it sounds interesting and it and I I think the best review would be myself. Right? So, you know, if there's a seven day trial or whatever it might be, then I'll I'll I'll do that.
The the main kind of reviewers that I listen to would be my friends over way over kind of reviews in, you know, like the Apple I store or whatever it might be. And I'm not a full skeptic in terms of the reviews on that, but I know it's possible to fake reviews.
Alright. And I also know that, you know, sometimes a review might be for an old version of an app. And so there's lots of reasons that, you know, testing something out for yourself and making a decision for yourself or getting a recommendation from a friend that would be way over reading reviews.
Interesting.
Yeah. I'm I'm similar. I will only read reviews if I'm trying to figure out which app I'm downloading, and that there's three that look exactly the same. Yeah.
Is there comparing this yeah.
The two giants a month. Yeah. Mostly.
Doing here?
How about you, Lauren? You look at reviews?
Yeah. So I do. I my my husband always tells me that I am so weird for that, because I do. I look at reviews for almost everything, and I go through, like, a rabbit hole.
So once I get started, I don't read just, like, three. I read, like, ten or, you know, I I try to deep dive, try to get past the ones that are like, this was great. Five stars. You know, I wanna get into the deep deep gap reviews.
And so I I I review almost everything. That includes purchases, clothes, anything. Netflix, I was the I read reviews before we subscribe to Netflix. Not at all.
My husband probably was like, dude, it's just TV. Let's just subscribe. I just want to watch this TV show. Can we just get to that?
So, yes. I love that.
Kind of opposite from Elliot. I thought I really read the reviews.
Let's come back to something that's near and dear to my heart, and that would be tracking expenses around your subscription.
I can tell you from personal experience, I do not. You probably picked that up. I do not track expenses on subscriptions.
The things that trigger me are things like Disney raising their prices. So now I'm actually looking at Disney and going, do I really need it? The answer is yes. But, you know, looking at it because it was a significant raise in prices. Do any of you actually track your multiple subscriptions expenses and, like, how do you do that? Mallory, you look like you're laughing. Why don't you come off mute?
Yeah. I'm not a sure representative of the wider population here. But as a data scientist, I have loved what open banking and access to personal banking data has done for my ability to create custom analytics for my overall spending. So I do absolutely do that.
And it's definitely a process that I've had lots of friends say, oh, could you do that for me? Can you set this up? I'd love to know. I think Apple now tries to aggregate together some of the things that you're subscribed to.
You can check it in the, like, settings bit on your phone. But, obviously, that only applies to things that are directly through their their platform. So, yes, I do. But it's a very custom piece of analytics that I have done for myself, and I do think it's hard to do.
And I think I think that it would be amazing. And I would definitely pay I would pay to have somebody take that off my hands and provide it for me in, like, a really slick user interface. And I never have to update the code.
I feel I feel like they have services.
Elliot and Marie. I do feel like there are services, but I I just I see the ad for the service that does that, and I quickly swipe it away because I don't because I enjoy my life. But, but I do think I've seen ads for for companies that do that. Have any of you seen anything like that?
I understand. Okay.
I'm sure there is as well. Do you know what I don't wanna have to do? Because you I would have to do this. I'm sure. I would have to go and find all of the subscriptions to put in that data and connect them or, you know, and I don't want to do that. I want it to be something or someone that I can I can pay for it, and it just goes and finds it based on my bank details maybe?
Yeah. Well, if you sign away your life, then AI can do that for for you.
Like, if you sign away your life, AI can look at all of your different credit card statements, right, including your Apple statement and all of that and pull out every I would imagine, and pull everything that's a subscription and then upload it into a platform.
I'll I'll give it that data.
Yeah. Yeah. With consent to using my data in that way.
I would I yeah.
It's hard. Right? It's it's really hard to decide how to how to consent. I know, like, with GDPR and everything else in in Europe, y'all are far ahead of America in terms of wanting your data to be private, wanting it to be, you know, I have the right to be forgotten kind of kind of control over your data.
We are we in the states are nowhere near that. I I hope we get there, but but I think it's a a really powerful thing.
But I digress. Let's let's get back to subscriptions. We have more fun than than privacy. Let's talk about customer support.
I'm laughing because I could I have a million stories of bad customer support and maybe, like, one or two of good customer support. But does it really matter? When you're when you're thinking about your subscriptions, does it matter to you? Robin, how how do you feel about that?
Oh, hell. Yes. It matters a lot.
It's super crucial to my experience. It's not something I use very frequently, but when I need help and I can't get it or, like, through a knowledge base and finding the information very easily online, I wanna speak to human. And if I can't speak to a human, then, yeah, my blood boils. I get really frustrated.
I I'm I'm the person that goes on to the AI bots and I'm just like, speak to humans. Speak to humans.
I just like, stop. I can't find the answer. Just let me speak to humans. So Yeah. Yeah. That is so for me, it's super, super crucial, and I'm very, very quick to go to Twitter or X and just start complaining to the company if no one's responding to me.
So yeah. I think Yeah?
Does it change your buyer behavior after that moment where you get the absolutely terrible customer support?
Like, have you have you It leaves a it leaves a it leaves us our taste in my mouth about that company.
And then I don't want if I can, usually after that experience, if it's easy enough for me to just be like, I don't have to work with them again, like, then I would cut it off. If, unfortunately, I am dependent on it and it's kinda difficult to switch to an alternative provider, then I'll I'll sort of, like, begrudgingly stick with it, but kind of keeping open minded to, like, an alternative to switch. So, like, loyalty my loyalty definitely gets influenced by the type of customer support that I get. Maybe it's because I'm South African and in South Africa, we just do customer service really, really well. Most of the call centers for the UK, by the way, are actually supported by South Africans, just FYI.
Beatrice Town. Yeah. Yeah. Every time I call a UK company, I get a South African accent.
They're calling out of Durban, which is like the hometown my hometown.
So, yeah, I guess my expectations from a service level are are pretty high, but I feel like rightfully so if you want to, yeah, maintain loyalty from your customers. So, yeah, very opinionated on this one.
I I think that's I think that's great. And I think it is a trend overall that that customers do want more out of their support experience. I mean, I I know million years ago, the story was Comcast. It was always about Comcast or AT and T or different billing providers where that was the discussion that they were the worst.
And what could we do? There's no alternative. And those days, I happily, I I just had a conversation last week with people from, like, AT and T, Comcast, a couple others, and they really invested in customer support. They really took that to heart and thought, what can we do differently to create an actually positive customer experience for for our subscribers?
Right? How about you, Elliot? Does support matter to you?
It it does. And I was trying to think about this because as Robin said, support you only understand what the support's like when you need it. So if everything's great, then then great. And actually, something I thought about was was good and bad experience that I had.
And I think what I realized is if the product or the service is is really good or too hard to switch that you have to stay, then bad customer experience isn't really gonna make a difference. I mean, you might be grunch having to stay with them, but Yeah. You're stuck. Right?
Whereas really good customer experience, I've actually before been tempted to stay because of good customer experience, even if it wasn't the best service or the best product, because it was so easy to deal with whatever I needed to, actually, there I mean, there's always a cost of of switching. You never know what it's gonna be like on, you know, with something else.
And sometimes that customer experience, would they just convince me to stay, like, literally convince me to stay in non sales y, just being extremely kind of nice, supporting whatever it was I I needed. So even if the, yeah, if the the product or the service isn't necessarily the best in market, good customer service can can mean that I stay with them.
I love that. Yeah. I I think getting that good customer service when it really matters, both of you have have brought that up. I know there's a subscription service that does GPS tracking of your dog through a collar, and their customer support is incredible.
Just incredible because they know how much people love their dogs.
And if you lose your dog, your your your cortisol levels are out of control, your emotions are heightened, and they lean in on that customer support. They lean in on staying on the phone with you and helping you find your dog. You know, like the GPS, it's like, no. Take a left at that alley. Sort of like, you know, the guy in the chair. You're are They're right there helping you, which is which is pretty incredible as far as experiences go.
Have you have you noticed any oh, actually, I'm gonna skip this one and move on. Because we did talk about the holidays already and and a lot about the route what changes that.
I I think we can all agree that there are events that drive that drive changes, whether it's holidays, whether it's budgeting, whether it's I'm going through I I just lost my job, so I'm gonna look a little bit more closely at how things are going. For me, my son is about to go, hopefully, knock on wood, he will get accepted to an expensive college. And that will cause me to look at a lot of things in my life.
Let's talk around, like, the final takeaways, if you will. So when you think about your interactions with all of these subscription businesses, and we've mentioned a number of them, but think beyond that. Think about everything you subscribe to for just a a terrifying moment.
What is one piece of advice that you would give to subscription businesses that are looking to improve their offering, looking to expand their offering? What what would you say? And let's just go round robin on this. Who wants to go first? Just come off.
Flexibility of kind of payment and frequency of that service. So for I'll give you a very quick example. For my subscription for the New Yorker magazine, I would actually like it if I could tweak how often I got the magazine.
So let's say there was a period where I didn't have as much, you know, money to spend on it. It's quite expensive. You you pay for it kind of yearly. You know, being able to say, actually, I wanna receive the magazine every other week. That could save me from canceling it completely. So I think flexibility of kind of frequency of the the product. Probably harder with the service, but flexibility of of it.
I think I'm mirroring on something Elliot had spoken to, and I guess the one of the last questions we had. But I think for me, having really good customer support, I'm really willing to be more patient with any issues on our platform if if I have that. So I think prioritizing that because it really helps to build trust and loyalty.
I agree.
I'm just saying Lauren? Sorry. I would say definitely consistency in listening to your customers and your audience when they tell you that something is not necessarily working or when they tell you something is really working, please don't take it away.
So definitely consistency in listening to your audience for sure.
Maybe I'll go a totally different direction and say, give me back information about what I'm doing and and seeing and using and tell me all of that stuff and do the analytics, with the previous caveat. Don't do weird personalization.
Yeah.
Yeah. Do you subscribe to an aura by any chance? Like or any kind of, like, health device I've I subscribe to an aura. It's a ring, and it gives me so much juicy data.
And They look like Garmin Strava kind of girl.
But There you go.
Yeah. Yeah. I really like that. Cool.
Like, I'm, not disinterested in, like, knowing what kinds of things I watch or listen to, or, like, learning about myself by giving me back my data. So not just, like, personal health data stuff. I think it applies across the board.
Do you get any like end of year things that delight you? Like, I know a lot of friends get like an end of year on Instagram of like, here's your top most popular photos and Spotify. Here's your most listened to tracks or here's your most listened to genre.
I don't like the end of year health ones because they're usually not good news, but it's good. It's good. You know, I've shared it with my doctor before. I've been like, hey.
Look at my end of year health. And she found that very interesting because that took our appointment in a different direction. Right? She was like, oh, data beyond our, you know, our visits in person can really change the the conversation you have with your doctor.
But do any of you get those end of year things? Because we're we're coming right into that season where we're gonna get can't wait.
Yep.
I think I think one the one that I got that gave me the biggest shock was Google Maps decided to tell me how many times I traveled around the world in one year because I've been traveling so much, flying a lot for work.
Yeah. That was not a number I needed to know. What a metric.
I mean, then again, I mean, if it were, you know, somebody that's, say, in sales and they're doing a lot of travel Well, at wetland, I was I circumvented the US twice because I was traveling to Asia to South America doing about two business trips a month.
So, yeah, racked it up very quickly.
The Could be a positive, though. I mean, like, for someone that is, like, an individual compute trail reader to sales, they might take that report and surface it to their CRO and say, look. I busted it for this company this year. I was cranking.
I went around the world twice. I mean, that would be a fun add to your self review at the end of the year of, like, hey. That's right. This is what I've been doing for work of Elliott.
I was just saying about the the end of the year that the Spotify rap playlist that comes out, I that is so important to me that it impacts how I listen to music for the rest of the year. This does sound a bit strange, but someone would say, like, oh, can I put someone your you know, let let's put a song on? And if it's someone I don't, you know, put music on. If someone I don't think has good music taste, I'll I'll just put you know, I don't have my phone on me.
Someone else has to give their phone, you know, or playing music in the office. Yeah. You know, I remember once we my phone was used for music in the office, and Despacito got in my Spotify rap, and I was so upset with that. So it's funny that just that kind of feature actually impacts the rest of my kind of behavior for the rest of the year on on that app.
You guys are all so interesting. This this has been really fun. I do wanna wrap with one last question. Does anyone have any crazy prediction? Though there is literally no wrong answer here, but does anyone have a crazy prediction about the future of subscription?
This is kind of I've noticed a trend sort of, so it might be on the horizon.
But being able to subscribe to one one subscription that allows you to view any and all media. So Disney did this with Hulu and ESPN and all of that. And so I'm I'm I'm I could definitely see in the future that we would have one subscription service for every single form of TV media that we could get. It would be probably extremely expensive, but it might be worth it if you watch majority of those things.
So like it.
I'm gonna do my personalization trend and say maybe we'll head into predictive subscriptions.
So maybe I'll get home and I'll have, you know, a vitamin b twelve subscription that shows up every, you know, ten weeks because I'm, you know, low on something or it's winter in the United Kingdom, we get enough sunlight and need to be able to absorb vitamin D, but also smaller things like toilet paper rolls or other things I use in my household. And, like, will all of the kinds of online services I use then predict and start to send me stuff on a schedule? That would be a delight.
I like that. Would you be willing to let a robot walk around your house if that perk came through? I I just attended a session on a AI and robot, so I'm actually thinking about it.
I don't know if I would let a robot walk around my house, but I might be up for like a camera that captures images and reads when like the stock of something is low. Yeah. I don't know.
But I guess it's the same thing that I don't want it reading.
You can have smart fridges where let's say you have milk and when it's low, it automatically orders it off Amazon, you know, and then milk because you're low. I I think I think soon everything will be subscriptions. I think, yeah, it will be everywhere.
And I think that is weird. We're not we're not far off that. In a few years, Basically, everything you can do will company will be pushing to have a subscription for it.
Are you here for that? Or are you, like, are you excited about that or just think it's a little odd?
No. I'm not excited about it because one of my earlier answers was I don't know how to track all of them.
Yeah. Yeah.
No. No.
It's true. It's true.
If it's in different terms, you're banking, Elliot, you can set a budget.
Yeah. I I love this conversation. I think we've we've all learned a little bit from each other. Lauren and Robin, do you wanna share any any crazy prediction?
I mean, mine is very much along the lines of Mallory's as well. I think, like, anything that is going to make my day to day, like, a little bit easier and less admin than I need to do, and I'm happy for an aura to track what's going on with my body and Yeah. And and also what types of foods I should be eating so I can, like, just preorder everything for me, and it's just delivered to my house. And some recommendations as well about any sort of classes I should be doing. Maybe I injured myself, and I should be going to Pilates instead of going to Barry's food camp and, like, so so that I can just keep tracking, like, what's going on with my body. And, like, I think in terms of moving towards, like, longevity as well, yeah, though it's it's something that's in biohacking longevity subscription and monitoring what my what my body needs, that would be great so that I don't have to spend time researching or going to physios and figuring all this stuff out.
Con convenience.
Right.
I mean, if the system knows that you're low on b twelve, then why not send you b twelve? Unless you have a setting that says, unless it's a spend threshold above, say, fifty dollars, in which case, send me notification. They'll just auto send. Right? Something like that. Lauren, anything to share on this thought?
No.
But I do kinda have something to follow-up with what Mallory and Robin were saying. It's like, right now, I I have contacts, and I get a text message every thirty days to tell me when you need to change out your contact, which I am like, I love it because I forget. I'll just put that sucker in every day, and I'm like, oh, it's thirty two days. I I don't have that automatic clock in my head to go. I really probably should take this out and put it in a new one. So I can definitely see we're going towards that. And I love it because I have ADHD, so it helps when I don't pay attention to what's going on.
Go. There you go. Well, thanks again, you guys. This has been really fun. I've learned a lot about life and subscription and what subscribers want. So I really appreciate you guys taking the time.
