October 26, 2026

FRICTION. ISN’T. LOYALTY.

🚀 Audacious Move™ of the Week

FRICTION. ISN’T. LOYALTY.

Customer retention strategies built around subscription traps, cancellation friction and complicated exit processes aren’t creating genuine customer loyalty.
They’re disguising customer dissatisfaction.

🔥 Governments Are Getting Fed Up

On October 1, 2026, New York City introduced a new Click-to-Cancel Rule⁠ targeting businesses that make it unnecessarily difficult for customers to cancel subscriptions.

Businesses can now face fines starting at $525 per violation in New York, and could reach as high as $3,500 for repeat offenders.

Think about that.

We’ve reached the point where governments have to intervene to stop businesses from trapping their own customers.

What an indictment of business strategy and customer service.

And an even bigger indictment of how some organizations define customer loyalty.

💥 Congratulations. You’ve Trapped Another Customer.

There’s a disturbing practice in business today.

Make it ridiculously easy for customers to buy.

Then make it bloody difficult for them to leave.

Sign up in seconds.

Cancel through a maze of instructions, automated messages and retention specialists.

And when the customer finally gives up trying?

Celebrate another successful renewal.

What a load of CRAP.

You’ve retained the revenue.

But have you retained the CUSTOMER?

There’s a BIG difference.

❤️ Build Barriers to Customer Exit™ That MATTER

In my BE DiFFERENT Growth Playbook™, I advocate building Barriers to Customer Exit™.

But I’m NOT talking about making cancellation difficult.

I’m talking about creating experiences so extraordinary that customers don’t WANT to leave.

Unexpected Acts of CARING.

Solving problems competitors wouldn’t touch.

Making customers FEEL special.

Giving them something they can’t get anywhere else.

Dazzling Moments™.

That’s what customers CRAVE.

Not another loyalty program.

Not another complicated contract.

And certainly not another cancellation obstacle.

The objective is to become The ONLY One™ who delivers the experience your chosen customers desire.

That’s how you build genuine customer loyalty.

⛓️‍💥 Stop Measuring Captivity

Businesses obsess over customer retention rates.

Low churn.

High renewals.

Long customer relationships.

Lovely numbers.

But here’s the question nobody wants to ask.

How many customers are staying because they WANT to?

And how many are staying because leaving is simply too much trouble?

One represents loyalty.

The other represents captivity.

So ask yourself:

“If every customer could leave us effortlessly tomorrow, how many would CHOOSE to stay?”

That’s the number that matters.

Then talk to customers who’ve recently cancelled.

Discover what they stopped valuing.

What disappointed them.

What they CRAVED that you failed to deliver.

And FIX something.

Because extraordinary businesses don’t need to trap customers.

They create experiences customers would HATE to lose.

Make leaving EASY.

FRICTION. ISN’T. LOYALTY.

🚀 Want more Audacious Moves™?

🎙️ Listen to Audacious Moves to a BILLION™ for practical, contrarian ideas for building an extraordinary business.

✍🏻 Explore more articles, ideas and proven tools at BE DiFFERENT or be dead.

Extraordinary businesses aren’t built by ordinary decisions.

They’re built one Audacious Move™ at a time.

Now go make yours.

Cheers,
Roy

• Posted 10.26.26 at 06:00 am by Roy Osing
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