The subscription economy is booming, with predictions it will reach $1 trillion by 2028. For telcos and resellers, this presents incredible opportunities—but it’s not without its challenges. Research shows that a significant number of companies entering channel bundling struggle to maintain a seamless customer experience, leading to frustration, churn, and missed growth potential. 

During our latest Bytesize webinar, Cei Sanderson, VP of Products at Bango, unpacked these hidden complexities and revealed strategies to overcome them using the Digital Vending Machine® (DVMTM). From ensuring consistent cancellations to managing flexible upgrades and simplifying billing operations, the session highlighted the critical pitfalls to avoid — and how to future-proof your bundling strategy. 

If you missed it, don’t worry! You can watch the full recording here.  

Here’s a deep dive into the key challenges and solutions covered in the session: 

Challenge 1: Maintaining consistency in cancellations 

For Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) subscriptions, cancellations are often straightforward. However, in the channel, where resellers mediate access to content providers, the process becomes far more complex. Subscribers may struggle to identify the correct point of cancellation—through the reseller or the content provider. Even when they do cancel, their experience can vary significantly depending on the policies of each content provider, ranging from soft cancellations (access until the billing period ends) to hard cancellations (immediate termination and pro-rated refunds). 

Emerging regulations, such as the FTC’s “Click-to-Cancel” rule in the US, are raising the bar for subscription providers by requiring simpler and more transparent cancellation processes. As these standards evolve globally, ensuring compliance while maintaining seamless customer experiences will become even more critical for telcos and resellers operating in the channel. 

Key Insight: 

“A consistent, transparent, and seamless cancellation process is essential to ensuring subscriber satisfaction and loyalty, especially as regulations like Click-to-Cancel drive higher expectations for cancellation simplicity.” 

What’s at stake? 

  • Negative impact on subscriber experience can lead to worsening retention and a reduction in ARPU
  • Confusion about where to cancel: Reseller, content provider, or both? 
  • Inconsistencies in cancellation policies: Soft cancellations (access until the billing period ends) vs. hard cancellations (immediate termination and refund) 

Solution with DVMTM: 

The Bango Digital Vending Machine® (DVMTM) supports consistent cancellation journeys across all channel partners, aligning with both customer expectations and emerging regulatory requirements. By abstracting the complexity of differing cancellation policies between content providers, the DVM enables resellers of content such as telcos to deliver a unified experience—whether through soft cancellations, hard cancellations, or custom scenarios tailored to meet regulatory standards. This ensures that customers enjoy a smooth, predictable experience regardless of backend differences between partners. 

Challenge 2: Managing flexible upgrades and downgrades

While upgrading or downgrading subscriptions is simple in DTC models, it becomes exponentially more challenging when bundling through third parties. For instance, a Subscriber taking up a bundled offer, for example, of Netflix with Ads and Max with Ads, through a Telco may want to upgrade Max to an ad-free tier while keeping Netflix on the ad plan. Such changes can disrupt the original bundle structure, creating billing and entitlement complication. It can even result in an invalid offer in the channel causing the Subscriber to abandon basket and every loses out. 

Key insight: 

“Providing flexibility for scenarios such as upgrades and downgrades is critical for keeping customers satisfied, but it requires dynamic offer management specialized to the channel to avoid errors and disruptions.” 

What’s at Stake? 

  • Negatively impacting the subscriber experience leading to abandoned basket and reduced impact on acquisition. 
  • Breaking hard bundles: Customers may want to modify only part of their subscription (e.g., upgrading one service in a bundle). 
  • Billing and entitlement challenges: Ensuring the changes are reflected accurately across all systems without disrupting the customer journey. 

Solution with DVMTM: 

The DVMTM specializes in offers in the channel, especially bundling, allowing Subscribers the flexibility and choice to manage their subscriptions while maintaining seamless billing and entitlement management. Whether it’s upgrading to a premium tier or unbundling specific services, the DVMTM ensures all changes are captured and reflected accurately, keeping the Subscriber experience smooth and hassle-free and ensuring maximum acquisition and retention impact through the channel. 

Challenge 3: Master catalogs and billing complexities 

Telcos and resellers often manage multiple catalogs for various services—such as mobile, broadband, and TV. Each and every third-party content provider for channel offers adds another layer of complication. Introducing subscription bundles into this environment can result in significant operational challenges, particularly when synchronizing product catalogs, managing price changes, and handling multiple billing systems. 

Key insight: 

“The more catalogs and billing systems you have, the harder it is to maintain synchronization. This leads to inefficiencies, disputes, and unnecessary effort.” 

What’s at Stake? 

  • Duplication of catalogs: Huge operation cost and effort overhead where each Content Provider’s offerings need to be modelled within the telco’s systems. 
  • Rapid price change chaos: Rapid turnaround on changes from content providers can disrupt existing customer offers and internal projects. 

Solution with DVMTM: 

With DVMTM Billing and Charging capabilities, the DVMTM acts as a central hub for channel offers and billing plans, so catalog and billing management is simplified. It eliminates the need for telcos to replicate third-party catalogs in their systems, reducing duplication and streamlining operations. Additionally, the DVMTM handles price changes dynamically, ensuring that adjustments are implemented seamlessly without affecting the subscriber experience. 

How Digital Vending Machine® makes the channel simple 

Cei closed the session by highlighting how the DVMTM tackles these challenges with: 

  1. Seamless API Abstraction: Bango integrates multiple partner APIs into a single, unified API for any party on the ecosystem, simplifying onboarding and management. 
  1. Dynamic Offer Management: Easily manage bundles and individual services while adapting to customer needs. 
  1. Billing and Charging Management: Manage 3rd party channel offers and billing outside of the Reseller backend systems for all but charge events, for speed and operational efficiency. 

The Digital Vending Machine® (DVMTM) is a Bango SaaS product, and invests to continually evolve to meet and lead market needs, ensuring telcos and resellers stay ahead in the subscription economy channel. 

Watch the full recording 

Operate and maximize the success of the channel by understanding the challenges before they impact your subscribers. Don’t let the challenges of subscription bundling hold you back. Watch the full Bytesize webinar recording here. 

Ready to revolutionize your subscription strategy? Contact us at sales@bango.com  or explore our solutions to see how Digital Vending Machine® can simplify your operations and deliver exceptional customer experiences.