My “Near Churned Experience” with Audible
It all started with my unused credits in Audible
I have been an Audible subscriber for a little over a year now. That had been one of my few healthy habits that sort of forced me to “read”, something that I rarely do as a kid growing up like a bookworm. I managed to listen to 11 titles since I subscribed. The one free credit a month offer really pushed me to listen to more books when I am commuting from my home to office and vice versa.
You can skip to the end to see what did I listen throughout the year
Until the global pandemic hits.
Stuck at home means no commute, and that also means my habit of listening while in commute is gone. Yet I am still paying the $14.99 every month for something that I don’t use now.
I paused the membership…and it sort of worked…
My first attempt to save up this recurring fee is to use the pause option, where you can pause the membership as well as the payment so that you can keep up with what you are listening now, finishes it and then move on when the pause is over. I paused all I can pause in a year, which is 3 months of subscription, so I can find time to catch up with what I am listening and can eventually get back to the rhythm of listen to one book a month.
But the pandemic is here to stay, in fact as the time of writing this, Hong Kong has a record high of new cases today, things are not looking good and I am back into the subscription again after the 3 months membership pause has ended.
And here comes the Silver membership
While contemplating whether should I just cancel the membership first and the subscribe again later, this shows up towards the end of the “cancel membership” process on Audible:
What? There is a silver membership? So now I have two months to listen to a book? Well maybe I can do this, I can give it a try! So now I am a silver member now, keeping everything I have and now I only got 1 free credit every other month. I just turned from a churned customer to a retained one.
So that’s some clever tactics from Amazon and now I am paying half the money that I normally pay, sort of a win win here. What are your thoughts? Have you have any other “near churn experience” that you would like to share? Feel free to drop a comment below!
Bonus: My “listening list”
1. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
A super long but inspiring but still super lengthy book. Biggest leaning is everything is just a story in mankind, so always remember to ask “What is the story in this?”
2. Atomic Habits by James Clear
Written by a writer that started out from building a mailing list shares his productivity ideology and hacks that grew into hundred of thousands of subscribers. I guess I clearly need to revisit this since I can even finish listening to a book when I have all the time at home these days!
3. Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin
A business book about leadership, and also the story of where in US Navy SEAL training, even when team A performs way better than team B, once you swapped the leader, team B would eventually catch up and surpass team A, simply put, the power of a leader matters that much. The book is full of very typical leadership stories but with the U.S. Navy SEAL wrap around it, and it does makes the whole book more gripping, it’s some real life and death situation after all.
4. Contagious by Keith Nobbs
Can’t remember much except the STEPPS theory: (S)ocial Currency, (T)riggers, (E)motion, (P)ublic, (P)ractical Value, (S)tories
Yes, story again!
5. The Index Revolution by Charles D. Ellis
Basically the book tells you 99% of the chance you can’t beat the market in the long run, so if you don’t want to bother just invest in index fund.
6. Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh
An autobiography of Tony, from his childhood, to the day Zappos got “acquired” by Amazon. A very swift read and interesting to know how far the domain of company culture can go: they can turn their culture into a consultancy service to other companies on how to setup a culture for them!
7 . Secrets of Sand Hill Road by Scott Kupor , Eric Ries
A quite comprehensive guide on VC investment, from where does the money comes from for VC to the details of a term sheet that you might get as a startup founder. What’s Sand Hill Road? Its the road where the VC firm Andreessen Horowitz is located at, which the author is a partner of the firm.
8. The Phoenix Project by Gene Kim , Kevin Behr , George Spafford
A mind blowing one for me, as I could never imagined that there could be a novel that is themed with delivering software, one of the most boring topics that you can come across for a novel. It’s a fun book with lots of hilarious ups and downs. Time just fly by when I listen to this.
9. The Four by by Scott Galloway
A great book on dissecting what make these companies so big that it touches almost all parts of our life now. From the simple network effect concept to the unlimited cheap capital that these companies have. The key take away is find a way to spread your “awesomeness” in this FAANG era.
10. Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull , Amy Wallace
The story of Pixar and autobiography of Ed Catmull, how it all started at Texas, how hard they worked for Toy Story 2 that someone have left a baby in the car parked at the parking lot, the “Brain Trust” meeting that they run to help directors and the Steve Jobs anecdotes as well as the touching farewell after his death at Pixar headquarters. Great read.
11. Factfulness by Hans Rosling , Ola Rosling , Anna Rosling Rönnlund
Recommendation from Bill Gates, a Swedish doctor shares his view on the biased instinct that we have when we perceive the world and surprises us on how we thought we knew the world but actually we don’t such as:
How many of the world’s 1-year-old children today have been vaccinated against some disease?
A: 20% B: 50% C: 80%
The answer may surprises you!
