41–50 of 57 posts
I get a sort of "spin doctor: feel from this move, with the big glaring eyes looking at me as I make my way to the message on the zendesk blog post... Maybe not so well handled since one could think Zendesk is trying to turn a difficult situation into a PR blitz: why are you posting here, rather than just emailing your customers?
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> How do you get more sincere than, "We failed. We let you down. And we apologize."? I've noticed with hacker news there is always a few people (different people, not the same ones) that are not satisfied with the apology of the day. I'm not sure why this is. My initial theory is that the apology didn't address a highly specific issue in the exact manner that person wanted. Apologies like this are (necessarily) non-s…
For the record, I'm not and have never been a customer of ZenDesk, nor any of their competitors- so there's nothing I could have "wanted" out of their apology. So perhaps I am one of those people that wouldn't be okay with any apology.
That you are consciously aware of. :)
(I bring it up because there have been some apologies I wasn't okay with when I didn't have a clear reason not to be.)
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> How do you get more sincere than, "We failed. We let you down. And we apologize."? I've noticed with hacker news there is always a few people (different people, not the same ones) that are not satisfied with the apology of the day. I'm not sure why this is. My initial theory is that the apology didn't address a highly specific issue in the exact manner that person wanted. Apologies like this are (necessarily) non-s…
For me, it's just gotten to the point that I'm tired of the exercise itself. The current idea seems to be "Do whatever the hell you want", and if enough people get mad "apologize profusely and come out looking like you really care about your customers." Facebook has practically turned this into an art. If you really cared about your customers, you probably wouldn't have done whatever you're apologizing about in the f…
Selection bias perhaps? This isn't anything new.
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The reason for the uproar wasn't so much that flat-rate pricing is a problem, but that the company switched the API functions that were previously global across any pricing plan to the $199/month plan. So even if you could justify $50/month or $100/month for their service, you didn't have the option. You already implemented the API and can only keep using that implementation with the $200/month service. I don't even…
These services are asking for too much for what they do but I think everyone is conditioned to giving away so much to services that touch their money, that they think that they can get a piece of the pie.
I get a sort of "spin doctor: feel from this move, with the big glaring eyes looking at me as I make my way to the message on the zendesk blog post... Maybe not so well handled since one could think Zendesk is trying to turn a difficult situation into a PR blitz: why are you posting here, rather than just emailing your customers?
This is how you do a public apology. Nicely played.
Joel's school of apology: apologize unreservedly, it buys a lot of goodwill. My theory is that when there is an unfortunate outcome the righteous sub-person in us thinks that blame must be assigned before progress can be made. This is might be true in some cases and not in other cases, but overcoming the mental habit might be harder than playing into it.
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Well, they didn't try very hard to make things right. Users revolted, so they caved. That's all there is to it. The "unfortunately these people are most vocal" misses the mark completely -- had they been NOT vocal they would've faced enormous bills or they would have to spend 50 hours trying to migrate to a new system. That's if the data can be exported and imported freely, which is rarely the case. So the customers…
Before, back when they complained in the first place - that was completely awesome. But to gripe about having wasted time evaluating other solutions? This is something everybody should do. No matter how happy you are using any product, be it software, hardware, utilities, daily transportation, you consider evaluating costs/benefits of a "Plan B".
I guess most do a analysis when signing up and would either forget about it until they hear of something cheaper from somebody or do a reevaluation after a fixed period of time like say every 3-6 months.
This sudden price change made everybody stop what they were doing and look for an alternative now. And people spent time doing research, brainstorming alternate ideas and some made the switch already and now they say Oops!. This is why they are griping.
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Joel's school of apology: apologize unreservedly, it buys a lot of goodwill. My theory is that when there is an unfortunate outcome the righteous sub-person in us thinks that blame must be assigned before progress can be made. This is might be true in some cases and not in other cases, but overcoming the mental habit might be harder than playing into it.
And yet, when Joel made the decision to shaft the Stack Exchange 1.0 testers, they didn't get anything close to an apology. What they got instead was a pitch about why they should be happy to give up their business model.
I suppose in both cases the distinction is that Joel decided not to apologize. The original point was about how he does that when he actually does it. And all or nothing is a legit thing to do here.
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How do you get more sincere than, "We failed. We let you down. And we apologize."? I'm asking this in all honesty; I don't really understand where you see this as being insincere. Just curious.
Because they are apologizing for the wrong thing. "We have also been reaching out to our customers to truly understand the heart of why you are upset" suggests that it never even occurred to them that people would be mad about this. I mean, really? They knew very well what they were up to; businesses don't do this sort of thing on a whim. I'd bet you anything this guy has a spreadsheet showing revenue shooting throug…