Support your first subscribers
Familiarize yourself with the Recharge subscriber experience to anticipate questions and get ahead of customer support needs. Discover customer portal enhancements and explore additional tips for empowering your subscribers to manage their own subscriptions.
Four steps for a smooth subscriber experience
Make sure you check off these key steps to better support your first subscribers.
- Customize how subscriptions appear on your site by adjusting the theme of your subscription widget.Adjust the appearance of the widget to fit your theme and site styles.
- Brand your notifications.Choose the notifications you would like your customers to receive and adjust their language.
- Customize the customer portal.You can adjust the theme of the customer portal, as well as the actions customers can take within it to manage their subscriptions.
- Integrate Recharge with your tech stack.If your store already uses customer support and marketing solutions, integrate them with Recharge to ensure that customers can easily access and update their subscriptions.
Additional features to empower your subscribersLooking for more ways to allow customers to modify their subscriptions without your help? Consider launching RechargeSMS for free to enable subscription updates via text, and integrate with Klaviyo to incorporate subscription management links in your existing branded emails.
Train your customer support team
Make sure your support team knows how to navigate the Customers page to update subscriptions as needed. Your support team should know how to pause subscriptions, change addresses, update charge dates, apply discounts or price changes, change subscription frequencies, refund orders, and cancel subscriptions. You might also train your support team to give instructions to customers on how to resolve similar issues independently in the future, such as updating payment methods, adding one-time purchases, and other tasks accomplished through the customer portal.
Common questions when supporting your first subscribersExpand all
How do my customers modify their subscriptions?
Unless you disable the feature, Recharge will send your customers an email notification in advance of their charge date. From there, the customer can follow a link to their customer portal where they can update their subscription. You control which options are available for a customer to self-serve within their portal. You can also launch RechargeSMS for free or integrate with Klaviyo to enable additional subscription management options. ResourcesEditing subscriber notificationsAccessing the customer portalChanging the customer portal optionsLaunching RechargeSMSIntegrating with Klaviyo
Can I customize how Recharge looks and feels for my customers?
Yes! You can use Recharge’s out-of-the-box tools to customize the appearance of your subscription widget and customer portal. If you’re working with a developer, you can build your own subscription widget and customer portal. ResourcesCustomize your subscription widgetUpdating the customer portalCreate your own subscription widgetBuild your own customer portal
How can I customize the notifications my customers receive about their subscriptions?
Email notifications can be updated from the Settings section of your merchant portal, while the copy for transactional text messages, if enabled, can be updated from RechargeSMS. Any notifications you build with Recharge’s Klaviyo integration can be updated in Klaviyo. ResourcesEdit subscriber email notificationsUpdate RechargeSMS messagesExplore the Klaviyo integration
Can I disable a customer’s ability to modify certain aspects of their subscription, such as swapping a product or canceling their subscription?
You can change the self-serve features available to a subscriber in their customer portal while allowing your support team to still update those features. Note that a self-serve cancellation option is a legal requirement in some regions, so Recharge does not recommend disabling this feature. ResourcesUpdate your customer portal settings
What are the best practices for launching a subscription product for the first time?
There are a number of tried and true strategies successful businesses use to ensure the success and growth of their subscription launch. ResourcesReview the Succeed with Subscriptions guide
How do I modify a customer’s subscription for them?
Update subscription details from your merchant portal under the “Customers” tab. ResourcesManage your customers
How do I build discounts to incentivize new subscribers?
If your product is intended to keep customers stocked over time, you might try an automated 5-10% subscribe-and-save discount. In addition to this model, you might explore discount codes for price or shipping costs, volume discounts, and subscriber loyalty perks. ResourcesAdd a subscribe-and-save discount on the product pageCreate discount codesOffer volume discounts with BundlesBuild automated discounts or add-ons with workflows
Where do I go to manage shipping and tax details?
Shipping and tax details are managed within your primary ecommerce platform (e.g. Shopify). While beyond most use cases, Recharge does have advanced shipping settings available if you need to configure shipping options manually or import them through a third-party shipping app. Merchants with more advanced tax needs typically integrate with a tax compliance solution such as Avalara. ResourcesShipping in ShopifyShipping in BigCommerce and other platformsAdvanced shipping settingsConfiguring free shipping for subscribersTaxes in RechargeAvalara integration
What instructions should I make available for subscribers?
Make it easy for customers to learn how to access the customer portal and manage their own subscriptions. Include FAQs in your notification emails and on your subscription landing page so that customers can easily find answers without reaching out to support. ResourcesInstructions for your customers
How do I integrate Recharge with my existing marketing and customer support platforms?
Each of our 50+ integrations can be quickly connected to Recharge through the Apps section of your merchant portal. ResourcesIntegrations directory