Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The $4 Million Complaint Call

inc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 95 posts

Re: The $4 Million Complaint Call

#41

Post by _b8r0 »

> There's a moral to the story: Every customer needs to be treated with respect, and no customer should be left dissatisfied. I'm not saying that every customer call is crucially important. But some of them certainly are–and you never know which one might be your "Bob."

I'm sorry to correct this, I really am. To provide apple as an example of how the 'bob' issue scales. It isn't about treating customers with respect, it's about treating the customer better than the competitor. Your competitor may respect the customer, as does you. How do you differentiate? If you're aiming for higher cost you need to go better quality of service.

I was in a meeting the other day and I spoke candidly to the customer about differences between our penetration test reports and most others. At the end of the day it boils down to relationships and the investment in them. The customer might not be aware they're paying for that, but that's a factor in every business. For us, that means we invest more in relationships and doing things our customers want than publishing research at conferences on the vulnerability du jour. Does it make us less known? Yes. Does it make us less loved? No. I find it hard to believe that there are many companies that have used us and thought, "There was an average company", and that's why bob thought the guys in TFA were so good. It wasn't that they were actually good, it was that they exceeded expectations, which is the goal we should all aim for.

Re: The $4 Million Complaint Call

#42

Post by shinratdr »

epoxyhockey wrote: post #9
pnathan wrote: post #4

Some people advocate firing your troublesome customers. This is an example of why you just might not want to do that.

There are 2 types of troublesome customers, ones that need extra help using your product and ones that want you to bleed (i.e. they want free stuff or competitors that want you to lose). I love customers that need extra help because I discover all kinds of things that can be improved with my products and I usually gain insight into a whole demographic that I didn't previously understand.

> I love customers that need extra help because I discover all kinds of things that can be improved with my products and I usually gain insight into a whole demographic that I didn't previously understand.

This is a great attitude, and unfortunately quite rare in the dev community. It's very difficult to see what is cumbersome about a UI if you have been navigating cumbersome UIs your entire life.

Re: The $4 Million Complaint Call

#43

Post by [deleted] »

vacri wrote: post #40
mirceagoia wrote: post #2

How many companies, even small ones, have that kind of support?

Small ones are more likely to offer it, since they need to be able to differentiate themselves to survive. The author of the story tells of his early days on a tiny budget - what's the bet that he doesn't take support calls now that the company took off, particularly 2am calls?

[deleted]

Re: The $4 Million Complaint Call

#44

Post by anon01 »

msluyter wrote: post #31

Survivorship bias. Meanwhile, at the other companies where CEO was too sleepy to make good decisions because he was up all night helping customers configure Windows... well, we don't hear those stories, because they folded. Edited to add: not to denigrate what he did here. He did a nice thing, and it's laudable to be a good person who helps people, whether or not it's the optimal way to spend your time.

We have made our first two customers extremely happy with our late hours and endless customer support. We also spent so much time customizing our product for them, we've had to invest 6 man months(so far) trying to get back to a stable product, on one codebase, that works for them AND new customers without direct engineer involvement in each turn up... it has been a mess.

Re: The $4 Million Complaint Call

#46

Post by Blunt »

seigenblues wrote: post #34
kevinalexbrown wrote: post #28

While I thoroughly enjoy the heartwarming part, I don't think that's why it's good advice from a business perspective. It's great advice because word of mouth is extremely important for a technical business selling to a small but lucrative market where buyers have alternatives (like hiring decisions). This will have less impact in large consumer sales where advertising matters, or when you have a market cornered. It…

This is dead on. It's a mistake to read this and take away some homey homily about how "every customer is a snowflake!" -- the point is that you should correctly value the passionate customer. Your marketing and outreach and customer service departments should understand the relative values of "bought it, loved it!" and "bought it, so?" Those relative values will vary from product to product/industry to industry The…

ya know, I just don't agree with anyone who posts here and uses the word "customer." Yea, Bob was a customer but he is also a human being. Less we forget this and remember we are working with other people then you don't need to worry about "snowflakes" or whether you're customers are happy or not. Just treat everyone you come in contact with with respect & regardless of how you met (business or otherwise) and this world would just be a much better place.

Re: The $4 Million Complaint Call

#47

Post by shinratdr »

epoxyhockey wrote: post #9
pnathan wrote: post #4

Some people advocate firing your troublesome customers. This is an example of why you just might not want to do that.

There are 2 types of troublesome customers, ones that need extra help using your product and ones that want you to bleed (i.e. they want free stuff or competitors that want you to lose). I love customers that need extra help because I discover all kinds of things that can be improved with my products and I usually gain insight into a whole demographic that I didn't previously understand.

> I love customers that need extra help because I discover all kinds of things that can be improved with my products and I usually gain insight into a whole demographic that I didn't previously understand.

This is a great attitude, and unfortunately quite rare in the dev community. It's very difficult to see what is cumbersome about a UI if you have been navigating cumbersome UIs your entire life.

Re: The $4 Million Complaint Call

#48

Post by wccrawford »

It all depends on the customer. Bob was apparently a nice guy who just needed a lot of help. I'd have helped him.

Had Bob been a jerk and constantly harassed the support staff with problems that were of his own making, then I'd have gotten rid of him. Probably. There could be circumstances.

Anecdote time: I worked at an SaaS company. 1 customer was constantly flooding our system via an automated system he had written. It caused quite a lot of downtime and breakage. And he was a jerk.

My bosses hated him. He was nothing but a pain in their necks. I loved him. He constantly stressed out our system and showed me the bottlenecks. I used it to fix all kinds of problems years before they became a problem for other customers. Any time he caused a problem, we'd lock his account, fix it, and then unlock him again. Sometimes days later.

Eventually, he caused enough problems that they dumped him.

Fast forward years later, and now our regular customers were using the system as hard as he was. Many of them. Now, if the system broke, we had no spare capacity. Everything was harder to fix.

I will probably never forget his name and the lesson I learned about how useful a 'bad' customer can be.

Re: The $4 Million Complaint Call

#49

Post by mirceagoia »

Blunt wrote: post #46
seigenblues wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is dead on. It's a mistake to read this and take away some homey homily about how "every customer is a snowflake!" -- the point is that you should correctly value the passionate customer. Your marketing and outreach and customer service departments should understand the relative values of "bought it, loved it!" and "bought it, so?" Those relative values will vary from product to product/industry to industry The…

ya know, I just don't agree with anyone who posts here and uses the word "customer." Yea, Bob was a customer but he is also a human being. Less we forget this and remember we are working with other people then you don't need to worry about "snowflakes" or whether you're customers are happy or not. Just treat everyone you come in contact with with respect & regardless of how you met (business or otherwise) and this wo…

Exactly.
Post reply on HN