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PayPal CEO writes personal response

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Re: PayPal CEO writes personal response

#141

Post by jchung »

noonespecial wrote: post #38

This isn't special... Yet. What happened here can happen even in the most dysfunctional customer service paradigms. A promblem randomly and luckily escalated from the people who can't do anything about the problem to the people who (generally speaking) won't do anything about the problem. As a lucky break, the person/department who generally won't do anything, decided in their mercy to do something this one time. IMH…

No, not a PR stunt. As a new CEO in an organization, it is difficult to get access to the kind of data and examples you need in order to create change throughout the organization. I've seen this first-hand advising new CEOs on their first 100-days as a consultant (before I started my startup). Good new CEOs will often try to find customer stories which capture the specific problems they're trying to fix, and use those stories to champion change. Frankly, this is pretty similar to a tactic used by politicians to illustrate their policy proposals with individual human stories. Marcus needs those stories now to create change in the company.

My hat goes off to Marcus, and I'm a bit surprised at the pessimism from HN. Tilt at windmills much?

Re: PayPal CEO writes personal response

#142

Post by niketdesai »

I think we should make judgement on the outcome rather than the email (since it's basically speculation anyways). Judge: Do these types of problems happen in the same amount and severity in 6 months? (or whatever time horizon you think is agreeable to see significant progress).

And there shouldn't be mockery for him fixing one account. Sure there are many to go, but before this account was in the same boat...so it's an improvement no matter how small. Whatever Andy said in his post really resonated to D. Marcus; now I hope it really is the catalyst for PayPal to improve.

edited shortened it up.

Re: PayPal CEO writes personal response

#143

Post by robomartin »

noonespecial wrote: post #38

This isn't special... Yet. What happened here can happen even in the most dysfunctional customer service paradigms. A promblem randomly and luckily escalated from the people who can't do anything about the problem to the people who (generally speaking) won't do anything about the problem. As a lucky break, the person/department who generally won't do anything, decided in their mercy to do something this one time. IMH…

I disagree.

I had the honor of actually having a direct email exchange with Steve Jobs in the context of difficulties doing business with Apple. In a last ditch effort to solve the issues I decided to email Steve. I had never done that before. While I was convinced that it was pointless, I did it anyway. It was three in the morning here in California. I was programming and shot off a two line email not saying much more that I needed help resolving a business issue with Apple.

Fifteen minutes later I get this:

  What's the problem?

  -Steve
I must have stared at that email for an hour. Not sure if it was a hoax or the real deal. I wasn't even sure that I had the right email address.

I replied anyway.

The next day I got a phone call from a high-level VP who had been asked by Steve to personally look into the issues. This led to many meetings and even a couple of trips up to Cupertino to meet them all and discuss further. The problem was addressed to everyone's satisfaction.

Having the CEO of a large company take the time to take personal ownership of an issue is special.

Re: PayPal CEO writes personal response

#144

Post by jobu »

jwr wrote: post #132
angryasian wrote: post #82

The level of discourse on HN lately is absurd. Here is a new CEO that appears to be looking to change things for the positive, yet everyone wants to be cynical and doubting. Yet when startups have major f* ups, the conversation is much different. Lets all admit change is slow and that paypal is still one of the more trusted payment solutions accepted globally. It would be nice to be able to use them in the future wit…

For the moment all this means that a high-profile person got his funds unblocked and has a direct communication channel to the CEO. Meaning he's pretty much back to where he was before PayPal set him back. For my personal blocked account, it means exactly nothing.

Over the long term that may not be true. FTA: "I'm going to use your story to radically change how we deal with holds, and customer service"

It's going to take some radical change to alter current perceptions of PayPal, but it may be possible.

Re: PayPal CEO writes personal response

#145

Post by pbreit »

protomyth wrote: post #113
ivanstojic wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case, I'd suspect that lighting the fire should be the first step to burning most of the customer relations department. I'll trust Paypal when I feel the smell of burning corpses from their offices.

I would rather they fire anyone who thinks the profit they have made off interest from frozen accounts is a good thing. It is just as despicable as car companies making money off their service center. I would really like them to make a policy change that any money collected in interest off frozen accounts is given to the account holder after the freeze.

Earning interst has ZERO to do with account freezes. It's all about protecting funds from theft.

Re: PayPal CEO writes personal response

#146

Post by pp_throwaway »

lancewiggs wrote: post #81
rhizome wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not hard to make an email sound sincere, especially when vetted by a PR agency.

I suspect no PR involved here - that email is repetitive, not polished, and feels like a new CEO trying to do the right thing and light a fire.

I work at Paypal and can confirm this is definitely David Marcus. He really shoots from the hip with communications, internally as well as externally. (He has sent the internal version of this message to the public: "guys, we are getting our asses kicked, we need to rally and change the way we do things".)

I pretty much agree with him. There is a lot of fresh blood trickling in from the top over the past year or so. Time will tell if the new leadership can empower the marginalized, scattered, and demoralized minority of good engineers at Paypal.

Re: PayPal CEO writes personal response

#147

Post by protomyth »

pbreit wrote: post #145
protomyth wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would rather they fire anyone who thinks the profit they have made off interest from frozen accounts is a good thing. It is just as despicable as car companies making money off their service center. I would really like them to make a policy change that any money collected in interest off frozen accounts is given to the account holder after the freeze.

Earning interst has ZERO to do with account freezes. It's all about protecting funds from theft.

Yes, I realize that is the reason it is done, but I will bet someone in PayPal has a nice spreadsheet of how much money they have earned on money that is sitting in an account without being accessible.

Re: PayPal CEO writes personal response

#148

Post by fragsworth »

stcredzero wrote: post #139
tobyjsullivan wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In all fairness, they have a new CEO. Maybe that is their way of looking into systematic issues...

> Maybe that is their way of looking into systematic issues... If true, they are doomed! New leadership is the Hail Mary toss, not the way you solve problems.

It worked for Apple

Re: PayPal CEO writes personal response

#149

Post by wpietri »

Karunamon wrote: post #101
eli wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Does that make it untrue?

Not at all, but wouldn't the benefits outweigh the risks? Security by obscurity really isn't security at all.

Security by obscurity is very, very effective in the short to medium term, especially you're paying attention to people hacking around it and are continuously evolving your defenses.

Also, they've intentionally chosen a domain where full security isn't possible, mostly due to circumstances outside their control. Remember, they captured a huge new market mainly through the sophistication of their anti-fraud systems. So security through obscurity has to remain a major tool for them.

Re: PayPal CEO writes personal response

#150

Post by teaneedz »

Klinky wrote: post #128
teaneedz wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A CEO is a pretty busy person ... when one responds (no matter how it was escalated) it says something about his/her viewpoint. Many CEOs would hand this off to their customer experience personnel (if they have some still) or maybe marketing department. This was not a manager's or director's reply though. The wording indicates someone (relatively new to this president's post) who appears to see that change is necessa…

Practically every major company has a corporate/CEO escalations department that tries to put out fires that their typical customer service path fails to fix. This isn't a novel approach. PayPal has a notoriously bad customer service reputation. It's going to take more than a typical CEO apology letter to really fix the issues that are embedded within how PayPal operates. The fact that a CEO has to issue such a letter…

Executive escalation departments are not the CEO. I served some time in customer experience before going into quality and then PM. UE and CE are very important to me. This letter does not have the ring of a typical escalation path.

Either he discovered the issue on his own or someone else within PayPal escalated it to his attention. Either is a good sign. The former path indicates a CEO who is actively listening to users and is deliberately making time to gather user feedback outside of normal channels - a very good thing for any CEO worth their salt. The latter indicates that someone else within PayPal or closely tied to PayPal had the good sense to escalate it to the CEO's eyes - that person deserves a promotion (he/she probably has some relavent skills that PayPal really needs at the moment).

I just don't see this as a typical CEO apology. It's personal and the wording actually suggests something more than a typical CEO response - I've seen a few.

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