Comments on: When members want to leave your online community

By: Simon Hayward

Simon Hayward — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 23:25:07 +0000

My thought would be to have an auto emailer when someone unsubscribes or closes their account with a Survey asking why they are leaving, how can we improve etc. and thereby get feedback on how you can improve your community.

By: Edwina

Edwina — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 12:42:11 +0000

Just wanted to say thanks for this post. I just had to respond to a message by a user who requested to have their account deleted, and your advice helped me draft a good reply (I hope).

By: Shawn

Shawn — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 14:27:17 +0000

If you get contacted you’re lucky. My users tend to vent their frustrations in the threads, kind of the nature of an off topic forum though.

By: Paul Contris

Paul Contris — Thu, 07 May 2009 15:19:45 +0000

Yes, this is a prime opportunity to improve the community. You can really quiz the person who desires to leave. Reflect upon the answers and then turn this into action if needed. This can be a real boost to the community by constant improvement.

You can even display what changes will be made to the community directly onto a negative post. The person that desires to leave will be monitoring the farewell post and may decide to stay based on your response.

By: Ken Fink

Ken Fink — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 18:04:54 +0000

There are lot many reasons why it might happen. One obvious is escalation in the quality of the service and content provided by the competitor. When there are better community out there which provide better things, attention towards our community comes down automatically

By: MarkM

MarkM — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 11:22:59 +0000

I like Richard M’s comment about the three types of leaver. The worrying thing about having people who just fade away is that they may not be able to offer you a reason why they left when you ask them. You could a problem with indifference in the community and not be aware of it until it is too late.

By: jennifer

jennifer — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 02:10:50 +0000

My initial reaction is that of Amish’s…..good riddance. However, I think that the “cooling off” period of 24 hours is worth implementing. A lot can happen in that time; if not, then the relationship ends.

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 21:16:46 +0000

TRL – remember that you are always important when signing up to a community forum.

After all, without members, the owner has no community.

By: Frank J

Frank J — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 21:08:54 +0000

This is an absolute bookmark for any community manager. Thank you for sharing!

By: Mr Woc

Mr Woc — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 19:24:10 +0000

Hi there

Yeah most of it is covered here, If someone wants to leave our chat we always ask why, and see if we can resolve any issues, a lot of the time i find it is possible to get people to stay if you can find out what their initial problem is.

Woc