from Hacker News

Ghost CEO lectures locked out customer about empathy

by mkishi on 10/16/21, 9:51 PM with 101 comments

• by torstenvl on 10/16/21, 10:19 PM

  That checks. Ghost CEO launched massive e-mail flame at me when I asked them to clarify their migration policy (it used to say you could "request" your data but gave no indication as to whether they honor such requests). Dude is outright abusive.

• by nostrebored on 10/16/21, 10:47 PM

  Horrific CX. I'm sure if Ghost discovered a bug causing data loss it would become an engineering priority.

  From a customer's perspective this is the same thing. This shows a complete lack of empathy with what customers feel when they use your platform.

  Stories like these stick with me. When I evaluate using a product, hearing about customer pain like this makes it a no go. Similarly I've told friends that I wouldn't work for a company they've applied to based on bad c-level engagement with customers.

  Stuff like this spreads. If you won't fix it for your customers sake, fix it out of self interest.

• by Jugurtha on 10/16/21, 10:20 PM

  I often test our product by recording a speedrun video of the main functionality, not to be shared, but to reveal all the learned helplessness and clunky user experience.

  It is amazing how recording a video going through the product does: the video is full of swear words and cursing. All the things that were invisible suddenly become glaring. All the un-necessary clicking and convoluted flows become torture with cognitive dissonance: "And you can easily just do [steps that clearly are not easy]" and it hits you. Hard.

  Hence, some things trigger that agression, especially in a more mature product. For example, I only used YouTube as a consumer of videos, but recently I was putting a lot of videos there in my personal account.

  I then created another account and wanted to transfer the videos. Easy, right? No. I looked and looked, and read documentation, and searched on the web, and people said you need to download the videos from one account, then upload them back again to the second account. That can't be, right? I mean I clearly am not the first one to want to do that, and YouTube has existed for ages. There has to be a way I'm stupid enough to have overlooked. I contact them on Twitter, and they link to the documentation that tells you to download videos somewhere, then upload them back again. This is insanity. They're already on YouTube's infra, why do the round trip. Just move the darn thing? I'm not privy to how their infrastructure works, but I have a feeling that this is not the flow I want.

  One other example... I have one Android phone that was not physically in the same place as me. I wanted to get the call history (which is backed up in Drive) to urgently call the last number that called me. I could clearly see that the call history was backed up in Drive, and it shows you a "Preview" button that, when you click on, shows a modal that tells you the call history is backed up, and has a button that says "Delete".

  I can use Find my Phone and pin-point the location, I can erase it, I can make it ring, I can download all my data and Drive. I can download the device settings. I can Delete a backup, but not download it.

  Now I need to wait for tomorrow to be able to get that phone for that call log.

  Here's what is interesting: it's almost impossible that I be the first one that hits something like this (either for YouTube or Drive) for products with this many users existing for this long. Moving a video around is practically so obvious, you don't think there would be a documentation for it, let alone a documentation that tells you you can't do it. Heck I'll run my mouth and say it's harder to write and maintain the docs that tell you you can't do it, than add that no-brainer functionality... But then again, I'm running my mouth.

• by encoderer on 10/16/21, 10:49 PM

  Are we using HN to amplify Twitter flame wars? Submitting negative stories of people we don’t like?

  This is not news it’s just red meat for clicks.

• by ryandrake on 10/16/21, 11:07 PM

  Frustrated users are an opportunity to learn and improve. As I read the rant about how his system is needlessly complicated web of "tens of thousands of apps, orchestrated by a complex billing management layer which has no link to the software itself, blah blah, blah" I couldn't help but think how much more fruitful the conversation would be if he had sent it to the engineering team instead of getting defensive to the customer.

  Even Steve Jobs would commonly take customer complaints about Apple's products sent to his E-mail address, and forward them down to engineering with a terse note "Why?"

  "Sorry, this is a bug and we're working on fixing it" would have been such a better response.

• by throwawybllion on 10/16/21, 10:57 PM

  Seems like the CEO told OP that they would provide her an archive download link upon request. I'm confused what the problem is? I buy that the trial lockout thing is annoying, but... Are we supposed to be up in arms that a user has to email support for... support?

  I'm annoyed primarily by OP's entitlement and vitriol, and secondarily by the CEO's typos and grammar.

• by hartator on 10/16/21, 10:25 PM

  From Ghost CEO's email:

  > Years ago, when l was younger and knew better, used to be very aggressive to companies on Twitter and lecture them about how they should do business. It was awful, honestly, and I regret how I behaved.

  Even ignoring the obvious typo, it is a little condescending indeed.

• by jonas21 on 10/16/21, 10:43 PM

  Honestly, both sides of this conversation seem pretty obnoxious.

• by ng12 on 10/16/21, 10:16 PM

  Twitter has become so annoying. I can't even see what @ghost is without signing in.

• by rahimnathwani on 10/16/21, 10:33 PM

  After reading the initial Tweets, and then the email exchange, I can empathise with both sides.

• by kleinsch on 10/16/21, 10:29 PM

  If the Ghost CEO really knew better about Twitter they’d recognize that this person is flaming for attention, not trying to get their problem resolved, so sending condescending emails is just throwing fuel on the fire.

• by MatthewJBrown on 10/17/21, 10:05 AM

  Don't stand in the way of customers trying to give you money. Isn't that a basic rule of doing business?

• by ivanmontillam on 10/16/21, 10:57 PM

  I reckon some of the powerful distribution that can give you a centralized platform like Ghost, Medium, Substack or similar. But the long-term solution is to own your website.

  At the very start the reach is not very enticing... but your home, your rules. (As long as you don't break the law, you'll be fine).

• by stereoradonc on 10/17/21, 8:23 AM

  Its odd that Twitter flame wars are being discussed here. Though, I have steered clear of Ghost- their paid plans are too expensive. Yes, I can host it but what if I can't? Luckily WordPress works.

• by hogFeast on 10/16/21, 10:35 PM

  The best part is saying that you have learned so much about why you shouldn't be mean to companies on Twitter, and how embarrassing that behaviour is...and doing it in a whiny email to a customer.

  Some people go through life "learning" the same lesson over and over.

• by 1cvmask on 10/16/21, 10:23 PM

  Ghost ghosted their trial customer. Perhaps the reason of the name

• by throwawaymedia on 10/16/21, 11:03 PM

  I don't know. This is clearly not a HN kind of submission, but I actually agree with the CEO. OP sounds more like an activist looking for attention.