Quite a few months ago a friend wrote a blog post about a problem with Plaxo. She also posted a corresponding note on Flickr.
I’ve never liked Plaxo because I found their service to be viral in a bad way; a lot of people ended up sending messages to all their contacts when they didn’t intend to. (One time when a Yahoo employee sent Plaxo invites to every pager & mobile phone in the company directory. At 3am. Nobody would do that on purpose.) About a year ago Plaxo made some moves in the right direction by de-emphasizing the “spam your friends for us” aspects of their service. This sparked a blogstorm, which led to their issuing an apology for ever doing it in the first place.
Hall of Fame
Plaxo makes it into the Hall of Fame for doing the right things to rebuild their reputation after shifting away from their spammy roots. They fixed the problem, apologized, and tried to engage with their customers in a constructive way. They even seek out bloggers who mention them and try to help them out. This is what they did for my friend, and their effort was admirable. A regular employee posted details on the issue and came back to clarify. They offered to waive the fee that sparked the original complaint. One of their VP’s even commented on the Flickr post 7 months later to make sure things were resolved and offer to personally look into the problem. Great service. but…
Hall of Shame
When I first heard that Plaxo had done something sneaky and deceptive I wasn’t surprised. The fact that they had stopped friend-spamming did little to change my feelings about them. They mentioned in the original policy change post that “we’ve always known that the update requests were a means to an end — our goal has always been to get as many members as possible so that these e-mails were unnecessary.” Essentially they did something that they knew was wrong in order to gain users. Why wouldn’t they do it again to switch users to their premium service?
So I posted a quick comment on Flickr summing up my opinion.
Plaxo is evil. Always has been, always will be.
The Execute Vice President of Plaxo replied:
Um, just saw this and was surprised. Um, we don’t do this. That would be bad. We’re not bad…
If you contact me directly, I would be more than happy to help in any way that we can. -> rikk@plaxo.com (me) or redgee@plaxo.com
And btw, I’m not doing this because you posted an outrageous comment on Flickr.
btw: Jonathan Grubb is evil. Really he is. No, really. Always has been, always will be. (I’ve never met him and really don’t know a thing about him, but I’m sure that he’s evil.)
To me this was more revealing than the blog apologies. I appreciate that the guy has a sense of humor, but this is not the way to keep the customers satisfied. This is the guy runs engineering and operations and he seems genuinely baffled that anyone would think he would do anything bad. Dude, you already admitted to tricking people into sending out millions of emails. He implies that I’m calling his company evil for no reason, that I don’t know a thing about them. Actually I know plenty about them, and I’m keeping away.
All posts
9 Comments
Valid email address required for posting
Thanks for the insightful post. Something about Plaxo always made me cringe. And it *is* scary to see the guy in charge responding to the public that manner.
They should be ashamed. Values emanate from the top-down and ironically this guy’s defense of his companies integrity strongly suggests it lack integrity. He would have been better off not responding at all. Instead he gave more evidence that supports your opinion (and mine).
Dude,
Clearly, my ridiculous post made my point. It doesn’t feel good when idiots on the Internet say ridiculous, scandalous things about you. Even in obvious parody. Does it?
So, put me in your Hall of Shame, not Plaxo. I did not get permission from the company to make my post. It was me. An individual. A nut. (um, er, just like you)
I’m so tired of bloggers, like you, mouthing off about “this is EVIL” and “that is EVIL”, without any consideration of the consequences or providing any evidence or support for you arguments besides your opinion or gut feeling. It makes them (you) feel good, you get some attention, and you have unanticipated negative consequences on others.
Dan Rather spoke about this quite eloquently at SxSW and motivated me to get active. So, bloggers beware, I’m coming for you, one at a time. Bawoohaha!
So, get a sense of humor, get over yourself, and accept the responsibility of your actions, baby.
Rikk Carey
Super-important executive guy in charge of important stuff at Plaxo, with a big mouth
P.S. And gimme a break that just because I have a fancy title at a company means that I need to follow a different editorial and professional standard than you do! Sheesh.
Hi Rikk.
First, you are a funny guy. I have a sense of humor, and I think you’re funny. Seriously.
I don’t hold you to a different standard than I hold myself. I also have a fancy title (Chief Product Officer! Hot!) and I always make sure I can stand behind things I publish online. If I later change my mind I go back and change/remove the content. I will stand by my assessment that Plaxo is “evil”, in the sense that the company seems willing to knowingly deceive users in order to make money. I accept responsibility for my words and actions. Do you?
I’ve worked for companies with similar issues, and I’ve always been happy when people called the company out. It stings a little when it happens, but companies need to be held accountable when they deceive people or help the Chinese government jail dissident journalists (to name but one example from my personal experience). One thing I don’t do is try to kill the messenger’s credibility in retaliation.
Finally, whether you like it or not, you were acting as a Plaxo representative when you posted on Flickr. You used your regular name and posted your work email address. And that goes to the real point of this blog — that customer service is something that happens everywhere your company interacts with your customers.
Wow.
Had I read where Jonathan said Plaxo is evil, I wouldn’t have taken it to heart… I would have thought Plaxo had some issues to work on.
However, for a company exec to “retaliate” at Jonathan in that way, makes me think Plaxo has REALLY BAD customer service. I have never visited Plaxo before, but now because of that, I will make sure not to use their services in the future, at least without a public apology (and what you just posted, Mr. Carey, was not an apology.)
Jonathan did not say “Rikk Carey is evil.” He said “Plaxo is evil.” Two different things. You took it too personally, IMO.
Oh, and “Finally, whether you like it or not, you were acting as a Plaxo representative when you posted on Flickr. You used your regular name and posted your work email address. And that goes to the real point of this blog — that customer service is something that happens everywhere your company interacts with your customers.”
Exactly.
I think that I’ve made my point. And, I’ll let our customer service record speak for itself.
And, I just don’t get how my sharp and witty humor is any reflection on our customer service. I guess still believe that we live in a real world, inhabited by real people, and that most of don’t like the sugar-coated blabbermouth corpspeak that most companies live by. Sigh…
For the record: Jonathan is probably a fine person, just an victim of my humor and anti-blog wrath.
Rikk, beating right and left in a misguided “defensive” way with ad-hominem attacks makes you look like a jerk. People just shake their heads at this, it makes you and your company look bad. Seriously, one can behave professionally, non-corpspeak, witty and funny in a positive way.
Also, when you are addressing something like “Um, we don’t do this. That would be bad. We’re not bad…”, you are speaking for the company, if you like it or not, if you got permission from the company or not, you are NOT speaking as an individual. If you speak about your company, you are always speaking in your role, especially at your position in the company.
> And gimme a break that just because I have a fancy title at a
> company means that I need to follow a different editorial and
> professional standard than you do! Sheesh.
You are better of and more effective following professional standards, and these are independent of what the other part does. The other part behaving unprofessionally is no reason lower your standards.
Unless your comment was up to your standards, then they are something you should work on.
Hi Rikk.
I really do like your sharp and witty humor, and I think it could be an asset to your company (which you obviously care about).
Again, my point is that your interaction with your customers *is* your customer service. Everyone here and on Flickr is a current, past, or potential customer of Plaxo. They’re also smart people who know to judge a company on the most direct, authentic information available. With this post I was trying to point out a disconnect inside Plaxo, where the CEO apologized for doing the wrong thing but other powerful people in the company put out a very different attitude.
I agree that we live in a real world inhabited by real people, and those people will judge your company based on what you say and how you behave. My company (and this blog) focus on making that company/customer interaction honest and constructive, which is why I brought up your comments in the first place.
Also, thanks for calling me fine.
Going back to the original Fame/Shame post. Sadly, I think Rikk has forfeited his company’s place in the Hall of Fame, by tearing down the admirable repair work Plaxo had done with to make good with its customers.
“They fixed the problem, apologized, and tried to engage with their customers in an constructive way. They even seek out bloggers who mention them and try to help them out…â€
Rikk has done the exact opposite! In pursuit of his pet peeve (presumably lower standards of publishing for bloggers) he has again taken the low road, and demonstrated that he believes that ends do justify the means! Which is why Plaxo is in the Hall of Shame! Boo!
Plaxo has a very open blogging policy. In fact, the company invented the very concept of blogging policies. I hope you can understand that accidents do happen. I’m sure if you met Rikk in person you’d think he’s a pretty swell guy you wouldn’t mind kicking a few back with. Sometimes this policy can cause an unintended argumentative exchange like this one. That’s the nature of this medium being both immediate and lacking honest visual cues like this one: ;-) of which, Rikk’s self-deprecating humor could have used a few thousand of (IMO).
But if this is the price Plaxo pays for transparency, I’d rather have the transparency. Wouldn’t you?
Take care,
terry
P.S. I used to work at Plaxo and, for what it’s worth, Rikk didn’t very much care for me at the end of it. But I know he didn’t intend to come off as “retaliating†and I hope you understand that he does look out for you, the customer (or not customer in this case) and means well. He just sometimes forgets that he is Executive Vice President of Engineering at Plaxo and that can sound pretty retalitory if someone with a title like that calls you out on what was a humorous comment, if a little not funny because it skirts the raw area of the truth of Web 2.0 a bit too closely: If you call out Plaxo on spam, why not LinkedIn, MySpace, FaceBook, Flickr, etc.?)
Neither he nor Plaxo intended to “trick millions of people into sending out millions of email†even though that certainly did happen, and when it happenned, it took a very long time for us to admit it was a wrong.
I was one of the very last to admit that. For that, I apologize.
2 Trackbacks
[...] Jonathan went toe to toe with one of Plaxo’s senior managers this week, and it got pretty heated. Jonathan hit his mark, but I have to admit the whole exchange made me uncomfortable. Plaxo is a tired as a target. Rikk Carey (their Executive VP) is clearly quite competent running operations and engineering over there, but he’s clumsy in his company’s defense, and on the subject of customer service this just wasn’t a fair fight. [...]
[...] And have a little respect for the hard work PR, marketing, and customer support people do. Some learn and reap the rewards; others don’t and pay the price. [...]