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Hi everyone!
There’s one skill I honestly think is underrated in growth: brutal self-awareness.
Not in the “journal about your childhood” sense. In the “notice what actually made you buy / upgrade / stay / bounce” sense.
If you keep an eye on that, it becomes much easier to separate cookie-cutter tactics from things that actually work on real humans.
I try to do this constantly, and today’s story is one of those little “oh, that’s why people ghost” moments.
The Ghosted Moment
Long story short: I mixed up the time of my tennis class and showed up when it was basically over. I was annoyed, freezing, definitely not dressed to stand outside.
I called a Lyft and was in that very specific state: I would’ve happily done literally anything to get into a warm car faster.
Perfect moment for an upsell, right?
Lyft always shows some kind of upsell. I’m usually fine with it — I actually like a lot of the details they use and maybe even wrote about them at some point.
But this time it was different.
I noticed a few tiny choices that completely changed my experience and made me bail.
Here are the banners.
Before you scroll: can you guess what made me ghost?
Things they did well
Timing. I’d just called the car, and it was clearly not coming in 1–5 minutes. “Get there faster” is a totally appropriate offer here.
“Keep waiting” CTA. No one wants to press “Keep waiting”. It frames waiting as an active choice to waste your own time.
Little loader on “Keep waiting”. That micro countdown gives you a “claim it now or lose it” feeling — a nice, light urgency nudge.
All good ideas. Worth saving.
What made me ghost
“An XL is available with an upgrade.”
XL is a very specific use case in my head: group, luggage, planned. I didn’t need “bigger”, I needed “sooner”. Instead of thinking about getting warm faster, I was now thinking: “Why are you trying to sell me a big car I don’t need?”“Get picked up in 10 minutes.”
Ten minutes in the cold does not read as “faster”. It sounded more like: “Pay more to still stand here for 10 minutes.”“Upgrade for $2.”
When I see a generic “Upgrade”, my brain shuts it down by default. It didn’t feel like “pay to fix my problem now”, “upgrade to get the car faster”, it felt like “pay to get something else”.
So: motivated user, decent mechanics — and still a no.
One question to ask your team if you are battling the same problem:
You can literally paste this into Slack:
Does this upgrade clearly solve the user’s immediate problem, in their own words — or does it just push something we want to sell, regardless?
In a minute, I’ll describe the tiny changes I’d apply to make myself convert, but first, let’s get nerdy
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What’s Behind It
Why didn’t I actually convert? Same reason most users ghost your product: I had a few questions in my head that either never got answered, or I didn’t like the answers I was getting.
Do I even have an additional problem?
Any upgrade is, by definition, a solution to an extra problem: get more of X, unlock Y, get it faster / easier / safer. If I don’t realise that extra problem exists, I literally can’t want the solution.
In my Lyft case: before I can want “get there faster”, I need to see “your current ride will take a while”. I never really saw how long my original wait was, so the “fix” felt random.Are you solving the problem I have, or the problem someone else has?
If the offer looks like a “great deal” to you but doesn’t match what I’m actually trying to solve right now, I’ll bail. That’s also why personalisation can either boost growth or kill it: done right, it feels eerily relevant; done wrong, it feels like being pushed into something I don’t need.
In my case: I didn’t need more comfort or a bigger car. I needed any car sooner. The offer was tuned to “XL value”, not to my “I’m freezing” reality.Will this action actually fix my original problem and the new one you just created?
For upgrades, the image of the “new result” is everything. If you haven’t really nailed my original problem yet, I don’t have much trust that paying more will magically fix both.
With Lyft: “sooner” was vague. I didn’t understand how much faster “faster” was (at the first screen), or whether I’ll still have to wait kind of the same time. So my brain went: “Why pay extra to maybe still stand here?”
Psychology Cheatsheet
“Do I even have an additional problem?”
→ First, show how bad the current path is (time, effort, risk) so the extra problem is obvious before you even mention the upgrade.“Are you solving the problem I have or someone else’s?”
→ Use the trigger you already have for showing this upgrade (long ETA, bad conditions, extra luggage, etc.) and frame the offer around that one specific situation in the user’s words, so it feels like “here’s how to fix what you’re dealing with right now,” not some generic “upgrade” for everyone.“Will this action actually fix my original and my additional problems?”
→ Make the new outcome painfully clear, showing not just the result but the improvement vs. their current path (e.g. “arrive in ~5 minutes instead of 10 for +$2”), so they can instantly see how much better “yes” is than staying where they are.
How to Turn It Around
1. “Do I even have an additional problem?”
How to frame the answer:
Always highlight the current situation before the upgrade:
“Your current driver will arrive in ~10 minutes. Switch to a closer driver and get picked up in ~5.”
Why it works:
You surface the extra problem (10 minutes in the cold) and quantify the improvement, so the upgrade feels like a clear solution to something real, not a random pop-up.
2. “Are you solving my problem or someone else’s?”
How to frame the answer:
Use the trigger you already have (long ETA, bad weather, late at night, whatever) and tie the offer to that one concrete situation:
“We can switch you to a closer (not bigger or newer) car that arrives in ~5 minutes for +$2.”
Why it works:
It feels like you’re responding to their context right now, not pushing a generic “upgrade category”, which kills the “this isn’t for me” reaction and makes the offer feel relevant.
3. “Will this actually fix my situation?”
How to frame the answer:
Make the new outcome and improvement explicit, with real numbers and a real option:
“Switch to Alex, arriving in ~5 minutes instead of 10, for +$2. You only pay if the new driver is confirmed.”
Why it works:
You remove ambiguity and show a concrete before/after, so saying yes feels like a safe, obvious trade instead of a vague gamble that might not change anything.
If you forget everything, remember this:
Users don’t care about anything outside of their problem.
Give them just enough information to make a clear decision in their situation right now — not your whole backlog.
🎉 Woow, you finished the issue, that’s awesome!
Hi, I’m Anastasia Kudrow, and I write Ghosted.
I am also a product growth consultant. I help SaaS teams apply psychology and PLG to build growth they can actually control. I run my own project, Growing Pains, and also work with one of the leading PLG consulting agencies, ProductLed, led by Wes Bush.
Feel free to follow me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anastasia-kudrow/
Or check out my website, maybe we can work together: https://www.growingpains.consulting/
See you next week!
