I deal with customer support on a daily basis. In my opinion it wasn't just the blog post that was bad. By then it was way too late.
The account auto-suspension may have been a bit harsh. But what they never should have done was explain it in public. The rest is just downhill from there.
Personally, I'd have responded to the friend's tweet with nothing more than, "Account questions should be directed to [email/url] where we can better assist." That way you take that stuff offline as soon as possible before it has a chance to foment into something nasty. And if it's really something private, there's nothing more you can say.
That aside, the tone in that blog post is all wrong. In paragraph one, "our side of the fence" draws lines and creates an adversarial tone right from the start. It's clear throughout that the author is taking this personally.
Paragraph two is mostly fine, but ends on a self-righteous semi-parenthetical, "We don't, for the record." As if they're going out of their way to be better than everyone else.
From paragraph three, the airing of dirty laundry begins. Beyond this, deleting 80–90% of the post would likely add to its value.
In paragraph five there's even some kind of victim mentality going on. They're being "baited" on Twitter, and "[attacked] for reasons unknown." The analysis is starting to get tedious.
All throughout, the message being communicated is: We did nothing wrong. It's defensive, and what facts are present play a secondary role to the message. Better to be proactive about the facts, leave out anything that hints of defensiveness, and just take your lumps.
Any time you're saying "what I intended," you've already lost.
But, again, a better blog post would not have needed to be written in the first place.
Comments
I deal with customer support on a daily basis. In my opinion it wasn't just the blog post that was bad. By then it was way too late.
The account auto-suspension may have been a bit harsh. But what they never should have done was explain it in public. The rest is just downhill from there.
Personally, I'd have responded to the friend's tweet with nothing more than, "Account questions should be directed to [email/url] where we can better assist." That way you take that stuff offline as soon as possible before it has a chance to foment into something nasty. And if it's really something private, there's nothing more you can say.
That aside, the tone in that blog post is all wrong. In paragraph one, "our side of the fence" draws lines and creates an adversarial tone right from the start. It's clear throughout that the author is taking this personally.
Paragraph two is mostly fine, but ends on a self-righteous semi-parenthetical, "We don't, for the record." As if they're going out of their way to be better than everyone else.
From paragraph three, the airing of dirty laundry begins. Beyond this, deleting 80–90% of the post would likely add to its value.
In paragraph five there's even some kind of victim mentality going on. They're being "baited" on Twitter, and "[attacked] for reasons unknown." The analysis is starting to get tedious.
All throughout, the message being communicated is: We did nothing wrong. It's defensive, and what facts are present play a secondary role to the message. Better to be proactive about the facts, leave out anything that hints of defensiveness, and just take your lumps.
Any time you're saying "what I intended," you've already lost.
But, again, a better blog post would not have needed to be written in the first place.