Form questions
Subscription pause survey questions
Ask six to ten, after the pause has been applied rather than as a condition of applying it. Three are never cut: the reason, how long the pause should run, and what would bring them back sooner. A fourth is worth adding: whether they would rather cancel outright, because a pause used as a soft cancel ruins your reporting.
A pause is the last moment a subscription business gets a straight answer, and most of them waste it by building a retention screen instead of a survey. Apply the pause first, ask afterwards, and the answers are worth reading.
The questions
Why they are pausing
Why are you pausing?Single choiceRequired
One reason. Include the circumstance answers, such as travelling or moving house, or every pause looks like a complaint about the product.
Is this about the product or about your circumstances?Single choice
Has anything changed recently that made you decide?Long text
Have you paused before?Single choice
Did anything specific happen in the last delivery?Single choice
How long
How long do you want to pause for?DropdownRequired
Include an until I say otherwise option. Forcing a date on somebody who does not have one produces a cancellation instead.
When should the reminder arrive?Date
One email on that date and nothing between now and then, which is worth stating in the question.
Would you rather skip a single delivery than pause?Single choice
Do you want to keep your account and history?Single choice
What would bring them back
What would bring you back sooner?Multiple choice
A smaller box, a cheaper box, skipping single months, choosing the items, less frequent delivery, better packing.
How often would you actually want a delivery?Single choiceRequired
Most pauses in a subscription business are a frequency problem wearing a cost problem's clothes.
What would you pay for the version you actually want?Single choice
Which part of the subscription do you value most?Single choice
Which part would you drop?Single choice
Closing
How have the deliveries arrived recently?Single choice
Did you contact support about any of that?Single choice
Would you rather cancel outright?Single choiceRequired
Ask it plainly. A pause that is really a cancellation distorts every retention number you report.
How likely are you to recommend the subscription while paused?Single choice
Anything you want to tell us before you go quiet?Long text
May we email you once when something you asked for changes?Single choice
Which questions to make required
Four are required. The reason and the pause length are needed to apply the pause at all. The frequency question is required because it is the finding: a large share of pauses are people who want the product less often rather than not at all. And the cancel question is required because letting somebody drift into an indefinite pause when they meant to leave is bad for them and worse for your numbers.
- Why are you pausing?
- How long do you want to pause for?
- How often would you actually want a delivery?
- Would you rather cancel outright?
The form built from these questions
A static copy of a form built from part of the bank, exactly as it renders.
Three ways to change this bank
For a gym or a class membership, replace the delivery questions with attendance: how often they came in the last two months, what stopped them, and whether an injury or a schedule change is behind it. Memberships pause for life events far more often than for dissatisfaction. For a shorter version, ask three: why, how long, and would you rather cancel. Three questions after a confirmed pause is enough to run the retention report and short enough that people finish it. For a follow up wave, send one email on the reminder date the member chose, not a sequence, and include one question asking whether they still want the pause. That single question converts better than any winback campaign, because it arrives on a date they set themselves.
Questions people ask
Should the survey block the pause?
Never. Apply the pause, confirm it in plain words, then ask the questions. A survey standing between a member and the pause button is answered strategically or skipped entirely, and it teaches people to cancel instead next time because cancelling turned out to be the faster option.
How long should a pause survey be?
Six to ten questions, most of them taps. The member has already decided and is not in the mood for a study. Put the reason first so a partial response still carries the field your retention report needs, since an abandoned form stores nothing.
Is a pause better than a cancellation?
For the member, only if it is genuinely what they want, which is why the cancel question belongs in the survey. For the business, a pause with a member chosen reminder date returns more people than a cancellation does, but a pause used to hide churn makes every retention figure you publish wrong.
What response rate should I expect?
High compared with a churn survey, because the member is staying in some form and the survey arrives immediately after an action they took. Expect it to drop sharply if the survey is long or if it reads as an attempt to talk them out of the pause.
Should a discount be offered here?
Keep offers out of the survey. If you want to run save offers, put them elsewhere in the flow. An offer inside the questions turns every answer into a negotiating position, and the frequency and reason data, which is the part worth having, becomes unusable.
What do you do with the reminder date?
Send exactly one email on it, and make that the only contact until then. The date is the member's own answer, so a message arriving on it reads as service rather than marketing. Adding a nurture sequence in the gap is the fastest way to turn a pause into a cancellation.
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Written and checked by the OneCraft team. Last checked .