pricing_change_comms v1.0.0

name: pricing_change_comms description: "Plan and send a price increase without losing the room: segment customers by tenure, contract, and value, price out grandfathering and phased options in dollars, set a notice timeline that meets contract and renewal law duties, and ship the announcement, FAQ, and pushback playbook as one kit. Ships a segmentation worksheet, a comms kit with worked examples, and a runnable impact planner. Triggers on requests like we are raising prices, price increase email, how to announce a price change, grandfather existing customers, customers are pushing back on the new price, or when to notify subscribers of a price change." metadata: { "includeInPrompt": true }

Pricing Change Communications

Purpose

A price increase fails in the communication more often than in the number. Customers who learn the new price from an invoice, who get no reason, or who find the cancel path buried, leave angry and tell people why. This skill runs the whole change as one job: segment the base, decide who gets grandfathered or phased and what that costs, set dates that respect contracts and notice rules, write the announcement and FAQ from the same facts, and handle replies case by case. The deliverable is a complete comms kit plus the dollar math behind every promise in it.

Workflow

1. Fix the facts before writing a word. Pull from billing: current and new price per plan, who is on each price (including legacy prices nobody remembers creating), billing periods, renewal dates, contract terms, and any price-lock or notice clause. Run scripts/price_plan.py notice --effective <date> --lead-days <n> for each candidate timeline. If a number in the announcement cannot be traced to billing, it does not go in the announcement.

1. Segment the base. Work through references/segmentation-worksheet.md. Cut by tenure, contract state, revenue concentration, distance from the new price, usage and value received, and payment health. Each segment gets one treatment, one notice, and one named owner. Top accounts large enough to matter individually are not a mail segment: they get a person and a conversation before any mass notice.

1. Price the treatments, do not vibe them. For each segment, choose among full increase on the date, a fixed grandfather window, a phased increase, a partial waiver, feature-based or usage-capped grandfathering, using the menu and costs in the worksheet. Model every option in a JSON file like assets/example-plan.json and run scripts/price_plan.py plan <file>. Report monthly revenue before, at the new price, and under stated attrition assumptions, plus the total foregone revenue of each grandfather promise. Attrition percentages are planning assumptions you state out loud, never forecasts dressed as facts.

1. Set the timeline backwards from the effective date. Start from the longest duty you owe: a contract notice clause, a renewal or automatic-renewal law that covers your customers, platform or payment-processor terms, then your own fairness standard, and use the strictest. As one verified example, California's amended Automatic Renewal Law requires notice of material changes to terms, pricing included, 7 to 30 days before the change takes effect for covered contracts entered into, amended, or extended on or after July 1, 2025, per Business and Professions Code 17600 et seq. as summarized by Orrick in July 2025. Other states and countries set their own windows, so check the ones your customers live under and get counsel when the base spans many of them. In practice, loyal and annual customers usually get well beyond the legal floor: the timeline is effective date, notice send date per segment, internal briefing date before that, and a follow-up date for silent top accounts.

1. Brief the inside before the outside. Send support and sales the one-page internal notice from references/comms-kit.md at least a few days before customers hear anything: prices, dates by segment, grandfather end conditions, approved save levers and their limits, and where to log pushback. A rep inventing discounts on the spot destroys the segmentation you just built.

1. Write the announcement from the kit. Use the templates in references/comms-kit.md. Price, dollar change, percent change, and effective date sit in the first lines. One true reason, in plain words. What stays the same, stated concretely. What happens if they do nothing. The downgrade, pause, and cancel paths in the notice itself, not hidden. Grandfather terms with their end date or end condition, for the segments that get them. Send from a monitored address.

1. Choose the reason with care, and test it if you can. Research points two ways, so do not pick by habit. In fairness surveys going back to Kahneman, Knetsch, and Thaler (1986, Journal of Business), people mostly judged a rise that covers a real cost rise as fair, and a rise taken just because demand rose as unfair. In a 2026 Journal of Marketing field experiment with over 1,600 self-storage customers facing 5 or 15 percent increases, a truthful market-based explanation cut attrition by 29.5 percent versus no explanation, while cost and improvement messages did about the same as saying nothing. The authors and summaries note the setting had high switching costs, which may drive the result. Lesson: give a reason, make it the true one, and where the base is large enough, send to a small group first and track cancellations, downgrades, and support contacts before the full rollout.

1. Publish the FAQ the same day as the notice. Ten questions, short answers, same reason and same numbers as the announcement, from the kit. Put it where the notice links to it and where a customer searching the product name plus "price" will find it. Update it when pushback reveals a question you missed.

1. Work the replies case by case. Use the pushback playbook in references/comms-kit.md: too expensive, product got worse, competitor is cheaper, never got the notice, contract says locked, needs budget approval, public anger, and silence from a big account. Log every reply with segment, type, offer made, and outcome. Honor a real price-lock clause the moment it is shown to you, extend notice for anyone whose notice genuinely went astray, and never argue about whether a customer received an email.

1. Close the loop after the effective date. Compare actual churn, downgrades, and revenue by segment against the assumptions in the plan file. Write down which message, treatment, and timeline choices held up. That record is the starting point for the next increase, and it is the only honest way the attrition assumptions get better.

Output Contract

• Segmentation worksheet: per segment, customer count, old and new price with percent and dollar change, tenure and billing mix, contract and notice constraints, revenue at stake, attrition assumptions (low and high for major segments), treatment, and named owner.
• Impact plan: output of scripts/price_plan.py plan with monthly revenue before, at the new price, and under the stated assumptions, plus the dollar cost and duration of every grandfather or phase promise.
• Timeline: internal briefing date, notice send dates per segment, effective dates per segment (including annual renewals), and the follow-up date for top accounts, each checked against contract clauses and the notice rules that apply.
• Announcement set: one email per distinct treatment, plus the short in-product or invoice note, all with prices, dates, and grandfather terms filled from billing records.
• FAQ: the ten core questions answered in the same words and numbers as the announcement, published and linked from the notice.
• Pushback log and playbook: the case types, approved responses and save levers with limits, escalation owner, and a running log of replies and outcomes.
• Post-change review: actuals by segment against the plan assumptions, and the lessons recorded for next time.

Operating Rules

• Never invent a reason. If costs did not drive the increase, do not write a cost reason. A false reason that customers can check, and they do check, costs more than the increase gains.
• Never state a notice period, grandfather term, or legal duty you have not verified for the customers and contracts in front of you. Laws differ by state and country, and contract clauses beat general practice.
• The cancel and downgrade paths appear in the announcement itself. Burying them risks both trust and compliance, and it converts a price decision into a grievance.
• One set of numbers everywhere. The email, FAQ, invoice note, and support briefing carry the same prices, dates, and reason. Divergence is how rumors and chargebacks start.
• Grandfather promises always carry an end date or end condition the customer can read. An open-ended promise you later revoke does more damage than no promise.
• Discounts offered in pushback come from the approved lever list only, are logged, and are the same for customers in the same situation. Secret one-off deals leak, and then the published price means nothing.
• Do not send the mass notice before top accounts have had their conversation, and do not let an invoice be how any customer first learns the new price.
• Keep the tone plain and short. One acknowledgement that higher prices are unwelcome, no apology spiral, no pressure tactics, no false deadline.