Cancellation Themes

WooCommerce Subscriptions does not record why customers cancel. The Cancellations tab closes that gap in two optional steps: ask the question, then group the answers into themes.

Both settings are off by default, and either can be used without the other. You can collect feedback and read it yourself without ever sending it anywhere.

Step 1 — Turn on cancellation feedback

  • Go to WooCommerce → Settings → Subscription Analytics.
  • In the Cancellation feedback card, tick Show an optional question on the account page after a customer cancels.
  • Save changes.

This is the only setting in the plugin that changes something your customers see. The question appears after the cancellation has gone through, never before, so it can never delay or block cancelling, and customers can dismiss it.

Answers are stored against the subscription, so you can read them individually on the subscription screen at any time. The settings card shows a running Collected so far count.

Step 2 — Group the answers

Reading a hundred free-text answers one at a time is not a report. The second setting, Group answers with AI, sends the collected answers to your configured AI provider to be clustered into themes with a count each.

  • Set up an AI provider first — see AI Features → Setting Up AI.
  • In the Cancellation feedback card, tick Send collected answers to your AI provider to group them into themes.
  • Open the Cancellations tab and click Group answers.

Use Regroup later to refresh the themes once more answers have come in.

What you will see on the tab

StateWhat it means
Setup neededCancellation feedback is off. The tab explains why there is nothing to group and links straight to the setting.
Collecting feedbackFeedback is on but fewer than 10 answers have been gathered. A progress bar shows how far along you are.
Ready to groupEnough answers are in. Click Group answers to see the themes.
ThemesEach theme with the number of answers behind it, ordered by frequency.
Themes only appear once enough customers have answered. On most stores that takes a couple of months — grouping fewer answers than that would read as far more conclusive than the data supports.

Privacy

This is the one place in the plugin where customer-written text can leave your store, so it has its own separate setting and its own safeguards. Before anything is sent, each answer is:

  • stripped of email addresses,
  • stripped of web links,
  • stripped of any run of seven or more digits (phone numbers, card numbers, account references),
  • and truncated to 500 characters.

No subscription IDs, customer IDs, names or dates accompany the text.

Free text can still contain anything a customer chose to type. If you would rather not send it anywhere, leave Group answers with AI off and read the answers yourself on each subscription.