How Riddle improved their Subscription Efficiency & Renewals by 63%, using Chargebee

The Problem

Founded in 2014, Riddle had opted to go the subscriptions route right from the start. This was based on the realization that brands and businesses that relied on content, such as publishers and media companies, needed to keep coming up with new ways to create content in the form of quizzes, surveys, polls and tests. Their first issue was the ability to accept payments from different sources.

This pain was aggravated when they realized that their users on the free plan were using Riddle far more than their paying customers - all without the intention to upgrade, adding a burden on their expenses.

Compliance to EU rules exacerbated their issues as they tried to scale. Their team had also deep experience with the friction of trying to collect VAT appropriately across 27 countries, in addition to the rest of the world. This experience made them realize that as an EU-based SaaS business, it was critical to accurately and automatically collect VAT for each country. The recent requirement to GDPR compliance added an extra layer of complexity to rapidly growing the business.

They wanted to find a better way of acquiring quality customers, and scale operations without being bogged down by operational and compliance hassles.

The Solution

Riddle’s search for a subscription billing platform started right in the early stages of development — “We wanted a tool that supported a wide array of payment methods, was flexible with how plans are set up and most importantly supports EU VAT regulations”, according to Boris Pfeiffer, Founder, Riddle. “Building that out ourselves would have taken precious time away from building our core product”, he adds.

Chargebee soon became their choice of a SaaS billing platform that offered all the features that they were looking for. This including hosted payment pages, which solved their billing needs and took away all the pain of securing payment data from Riddle.

The Pay-off

Improved acquisitions of quality customers: Riddle has been able to run several discount campaigns that brought in more users to the product — close to 34% of new user subscriptions via discount codes. Additionally, they went ahead and removed the free plan on their pricing. Instead, they started offering a no-obligation, free trial for 2 weeks without entering any credit card details. As a result, they saw a huge increase in the volume and quality of their subscription sales.

Automatic billing for increased efficiency: Riddle was able to automate processes around subscription management, including recording a customer, accepting payments with Chargebee’s hosted checkout pages, and following up on failed payments with Chargebee’s dunning and email reminders. They saw a spike in their efficiency with a 63% decrease in the manual effort involved in renewals and cancellations.

Better retention with Intercom integration: With Chargebee sending relevant subscription information to Intercom, it provides a complete picture of that customer’s plan and account history which makes quality customer support easier. Riddle views each opportunity to message a user as a chance to highlight tips, ideas, and features and better assist each customer.

Automated EU-VAT & GDPR compliance: More importantly, Riddle was able to navigate the EU’s tax and compliance laws. When they started in 2014, Chargebee was the only provider that automated EU-VAT tax management accurately; this made it easier for them to collect taxes based on their customer’s destination. Riddle is also 100% GDPR-compliant, having transitioned from being incorporated in the US to a German AG with all their servers located in the EU.

As a lean, fast-growing quiz maker, Riddle supports some of the largest publishers and sports organizations on the planet. We appreciate how Chargebee lets us spend our time and energy on actually growing the business - knowing that the back-end finance and revenue collection is well in hand.

Mike Hawkins, Head of Marketing, Riddle