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A few years ago I was part of an AI customer service startup. One of our first customers was a web hosting company, and we were supposed to take some of the loa

A few years ago I was part of an AI customer service startup. One of our first customers was a web hosting company, and we were supposed to take some of the load off the chat support team. When we talked to the support team they told us their by far largest task was handling account deletions. They had tried to just put a button in the control panel, but the CEO of the company thought it was bad for retention. So we started writing scripts for "I want to cancel my account" and similar requests. The official process also required the users to verify by email after talking to support, so there were a number of steps. Eventually we needed an API call for actually completing the process. But we were told the CEO had to approve. The CEO didn't know we were working on automating account deletions. And when we finally got to talk to him about giving us API access, he decided it would be easier to just add an account deletion button to the control panel. That's how we lost our initial business case.

tenryuu 5y ago
To me, even if you don't have an account deletion button. User retention isn't going to matter because the people who are looking for it aren't going to use the service anyway, you are just holding onto dead data
- intricatedetail 5y ago
  CEO with attachment issues, the worst kind...
- thomasahle 5y ago
  As long as they were still paying...
- Brian_K_White 5y ago
  Tell that to giganews or dejanews whoever the F it was some usenet service I signed up for once, who had no way to cancel the account on the site, required a phone call during business hours in Sweden or somewhere, and I think I even did the first few of their hoops like sent an email to the special address, but when they didn't simply honor the request, I just stopped paying. I think either the card was expiring naturally or it was google pay or something that I could shut off. (it was years ago by now so thats why the vague details) anyway, they actually tried to say I owed them money for years and I even got emails and calls from collections companies for a few years. If they had been in the US I bet it would have been harder to just blow them off like that. Simply stopping payments is not the ultimate trump you and I both thoight it should be. For my part I decided I was on record as having requested to cancel the service, and had not used the service, so do your worst. Go ahead and try to convince a judge that I owe you anything.

tenryuu 5y ago

To me, even if you don't have an account deletion button. User retention isn't going to matter because the people who are looking for it aren't going to use the service anyway, you are just holding onto dead data

intricatedetail 5y ago
CEO with attachment issues, the worst kind...
thomasahle 5y ago
As long as they were still paying...
Brian_K_White 5y ago
Tell that to giganews or dejanews whoever the F it was some usenet service I signed up for once, who had no way to cancel the account on the site, required a phone call during business hours in Sweden or somewhere, and I think I even did the first few of their hoops like sent an email to the special address, but when they didn't simply honor the request, I just stopped paying. I think either the card was expiring naturally or it was google pay or something that I could shut off. (it was years ago by now so thats why the vague details) anyway, they actually tried to say I owed them money for years and I even got emails and calls from collections companies for a few years. If they had been in the US I bet it would have been harder to just blow them off like that. Simply stopping payments is not the ultimate trump you and I both thoight it should be. For my part I decided I was on record as having requested to cancel the service, and had not used the service, so do your worst. Go ahead and try to convince a judge that I owe you anything.