Previous Step — Step 3 — Managing Your Member Portal
Now that we've created our Billing Frequencies, appended them to our products, and deployed our member portal we've started to hit it off with customers and they're signing up in droves. Let's understand how these subscriptions can be managed.
Without further ado, let's begin!
In a hurry? Watch our Onboarding & Training Specialist guide you through all Subscription Management features in just 4:21.
Navigation to Subscription Management
To begin, from your storefront navigate over to Apps > My Apps > sticky.io > Subscription Management.
Understanding Subscription Management
While the Member Portal enables your customers to take actions into their own hands, Subscription Management is a tool that empowers Customer Service teams to take direct actions into customer subscriptions.
Customer Filters: There is a myriad of search and filter functions to find your customers with ease.
On the right side; We can filter from 10 - 100 customers per page.
On the left side; We can leverage the search function as well as filter by Email, Order ID, and Last Name.
On the middle; And most importantly the view button located off to the right will load the customer's record on file and with it their transactions and subscriptions.
Subscription Details: Now that we've found our customer, from a high level let's review the details of the Subscription and subsequently next, actions that can be taken.
On the left side; We'll see unique attributes for this customer. Including their first and last name, unique ID, Email, & Phone Number.
On the middle; Arguably the most important part of this article! The subscription details. Here, we'll see the subscription details including the Status, Type, Amount, Quantity, Billing Model, Subscription Depth, Address, & Manage.
Depicted below is an active subscription with a type of "Standard" for an example product. The subscription has been billed 3 times for a quantity of 1 unit of the "Daily Beard Care Set" each time.
Actions for Subscription Management - Standard Subscriptions
Subscription Management enables merchants to perform the following actions on a customer's subscription:
Pausing & Resuming Subscriptions: On the top right of a customer's subscription, you'll have the ability to either Pause or Resume said subscription. After performing either action, you will receive an overlay prompt informing you of the new status.
Payment Method: The Payment Method option enables you to change the Payment Method on file for the customer.
Is it important to note: sticky.io Subscriptions natively integrates with BigCommerce. As such, storing and tokenizing the credit card is handled by BigCommerce. Merchants are able to rotate out between other available payment methods on file. Though any new payment methods or payment method edits are handled by the Payment Methods feature already available to your consumers when they login to your storefront.
Billing Now (Force Billing Event & Shipment): As the name denotes, you have the ability to force bill a customer's subscription. For example, this is commonly used by merchants in the consumables space and perfect if a customer wants to go ahead and get another product.
Changing Billing Frequencies: If your product catalog supports multiple Subscription Frequencies, you can interchange them at the request of a customer. Once updated, the customer will go through the remainder of their billing term and then convert to the new billing frequency.
This can be a valuable retention tool for customers who may not use or can afford the product on a quicker cadence as opposed to extending it.
Changing Billing Date: As the name denotes, you have the ability to change the customer's next recurring date. Be it sooner or later you can specify the month and day.
Similarly, this is another valuable retention tool for customers.
Skip Next Shipment: Enables you to skip an upcoming renewal prior to its natural rebilling date. This is helpful if a consumer is unable to pay for a good or service or may be away on vacation and unable to accept a parcel.
Shipping Information: Similarly to Change Payment Method, Shipping Information allows you to rotate out shipping addresses already available within a consumer's account on your BigCommerce storefront.
Billing History: As the name denotes, the Billing History allows you to see some preliminary information that sticky.io Subscriptions are able to pull from your BigCommerce Storefront.
Including the Status of the order, Date of Billing, Amount Paid, and BigCommerce Order ID.
Actions for Subscription Management - Prepaid Subscriptions
All of the above actions are available to you, the merchant, when managing prepaid subscriptions EXCEPT the following:
Change subscription frequency
Resume subscription (when cancelled)
Product & variant swapping
Change quantity
Congratulations! You're now an expert on managing subscriptions using the sticky.io Subscriptions app for BigCommerce.