We got hoisted on a petard today. I think we’re going to survive.
It started with a big complaint. We’re no strangers to complaints. I see them every day, and occasionally, they’re directed at our own company. Today was one of those days. The folks at 37signals directed a complaint at us on their blog. You can read their blog post here.
If you follow the “inside baseball” of the start-up world, you’ll immediately know that 37signals is one of the most respected voices in the start-up community. Nearly everyone uses their Web site’s marketing pages as a model for how to market your own Web site. Everyone, like, totally copies them. (I personally think it’s time for everyone to stop duplicating the 37signals approach to laying out a marketing page, not because I don’t like it (I do) but because it’s so successful it’s becoming cliche!). It’s distressing to hear such a vocal complaint from a company whose products I admire so much, but feedback is feedback. It can be valuable, no matter where it’s coming from.
The crux of Jason Fried’s argument on the 37signals blog, “Signal vs. Noise”: “If you prefer to provide great support on your own site with your own forums and your own help section and your own feedback mechanisms and your own FAQs, well, Get Satisfaction doesn’t play fair.” Jason went on to criticize us for using language on our site that makes it sound like the companies that don’t use our site don’t care about their customers. Specifically, our badge on each company home page said that the unattending company “has not yet committed to open conversation about its products and services.” As Jason offered, “That’s unfair and unreasonable. Just because we don’t team up with Get Satisfaction it doesn’t mean we’re not committed to an open conversation.”
Great point, Jason. We agreed with him that this particular piece of language — which was actually intended to indicate whether or not a company had signed our Company-Customer Pact — could be taken another way. Judging by this incendiary blog post, it definitely was taken another way. Conclusion: It was poorly worded. Our original intent when we released the new header two weeks ago was to voice the opposite — that our site is an “unofficial” place for customers to congregate, but that we encourage customers to encourage companies to join the conversation. We don’t want companies to feel compelled to join us. The point is to bring in employees who see value in what we’re doing, who have positive attitudes about us. We’ll never get anywhere recruiting angry employees!
Bad language, yes. But it’s something that’s fixable. So, we fixed it. It took about ten minutes to write it up and make the change live. Excellent example of a valid complaint getting resolved quickly. We wanted to go even further, so we added the word “Unofficial” to company sections on our site where no employees participate. We really do pride ourselves on being as responsive as possible, so we went out of our way to respond.
Response #1: Since the feedback from Jason wasn’t on our site, we responded in the comments section of the 37signals blog. It was a tough room, let me tell you. We didn’t get likened to Hitler, exactly, but some people had some pretty mean things to say. I was seriously impressed that so many of our supporters ended up responding and defending us as well. We have some incredible evangelists who go to bat for us. I think about them whenever I go to bat for other companies on Get Satisfaction, or in other places on the Internet.
Response #2: A number of people, inspired by Jason’s blog post, started new topics on our site to ask us what the deal was and what our policies were. We answered those, too.
Response #3: The comments roared on, as comment threads will do. We responded a bit, although we didn’t want to sound overly defensive. To hammer home our commitment to get this wrong righted, we decided to try something new: a live Webcast. 
As you may know, we started a Webcast series last week. The first one was a big success, and we have more planned for the future. Since we have our Webcasting site and equipment set up and ready to go, it was easy for us to simply invite anyone and everyone to our site for an impromptu, no-BS Q&A session. So, we did. It was a great way for us to connect with people who had serious concerns right away. No waiting around for official press releases or carefully worded statements. We’re big believers in honest and straightforward responses, so we did our best to give those.
Response #4: Twitter, et. al. We’ll continue to do our best to monitor online discussions and respond when appropriate. We don’t have anything to hide, and we want our policies to be seen as open — and open to criticism. Most important: We want people to know that we will respond, and as quickly as possible.
Response #5: This blog post, wherein I ask: What did we learn today?
I think we learned that we haven’t communicated the way our site works well enough. We also learned that a simple choice of language can mean a lot. We also learned that there may be other Jason Frieds out there who should know how our site works. We should communicate that to him and others better. We can do better at letting companies — whether they love us or hate us — know about our new features and their options. Again, whether they’re officially on our site or not. For example, we could do better at letting them know about our Company Update topics and how to use them. They allow companies to pin a topic to the top of their company page. Also, with the new redesign, we introduced a Company Message feature. With this message feature, companies can point customers to an official support site or leave any message they want. Don’t want to participate on our site? Tell your customers where you do prefer to hear them, and then quietly lock the door on your way out. We’ll do our best to broadcast your message. Seriously. We’re not trying to hold anyone hostage. If you want to handcuff yourself to your customers because you love them so much — now that we can help you with!
We’re definitely taking away the message that we need to do more than just send out smoke signals to companies about how our service works. I’m confident that we’ll get there, and we’ve already begun releasing new forward-facing pages (like our new home page we blogged about today) that explains how our site works. Our intention has always been to help companies who need to improve their customer service, and we’ll keep working at it. We learned today that there are other companies who aren’t interested in using our site in this way; we just need to make sure they are accommodated, too.
Great feedback, if painful at times. It helps us improve. As always, you are welcome to voice your own opinion in our community.
Even though I sympathize completely with 37Signals ruffled fur … the line “hoisted on our own petard” is the funniest thing I’ve read in ages. This blog post is an exceptional example of top notch damage control. They hit back with brass knuckes, you smiled with missing teeth, complimented the puncher, and are trying to make good.
As a community manager and open innovation evangelist, I’m taking notes on this whole kerfuffle.
Thanks, Jeff! Means a lot!
correction … “hoisted on a petard”. How in the world did you come up with that?? Brilliant.
You guys did an amazing job of defusing the situation and responding to the problem quickly. Great work!
+1 to you.
You’re trying make a business. They were trying to make news.
Nice response & good luck. It’s a shame they’ve not been chivalrous (to continue the medieval analogy) enough yet to give you your dues.
@Jeff. Our Eric is a right wordsmith he is. I guess it’s that journalism background.
And for those who have no idea what it even means: http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=19960808
:)
Hello Eric, a humble and yet great way to address such a contentious issue. (You must be from a different planet)
Although I initially understood the motivations behind the blog post by 37signals, I have very, very much appreciated your quick and collaborative answer.
This is a good example of professional and open reaction to critics and complains.
The banners that got added are a good step, but don’t even come close to addressing the problem completely.
A page got created for our company on your site. We have no way of knowing if it was by a customer or by one of your employees. Which user created a page needs to be visible, or folks are going to assume you did.
In the chat yesterday, you guys kept repeating “90% of pages are made by employees”; that certainly wasn’t the case for us, and I’m of the opinion that 90% of all “90%” statistics are made up on the spot. Especially when there’s no documentation.
In any case, zero notification from you guys was sent to us. It wasn’t until a customer mentioned the site to us that we discovered what was going on. I believe this was the root of what got 37signals so upset.
I still haven’t heard a good explanation for the reason why the “Company URL” field is non-editable in both the management and admin interfaces, and is locked to point to the page on your site for our company. Our logo, pointing at your page, and there’s no way to edit it.
Comments on your site indicate that emailing Eric, is the only way to change what that points to. (You offered to do so for a poster, I’ve emailed you, we’ll see if you respond..)
I’m sorry, but the actions don’t line up with the rhetoric.
Brian, the displayed URL isn’t locked. You can display whatever you like in the About section. You can also edit the logo. Just upload a different one. I haven’t seen your email yet, but I’ll check again. I’m always available to help: eric [at] getsatisfaction [dot] com.
Heh, and now here in his open letter, Thor is saying that *80%* of new pages are made by employees.
http://blog.getsatisfaction.com/2009/03/31/open-letter-to-jason-fried/
Obviously, I doubt this stat without data to back it up.
Regardless of what the actual percentage is, if a page is set up by non-employees, you need to be doing due diligence and making sure the company knows about the page.
By not doing that, you’ve surprised and ticked off the people most likely to be in charge of the purchasing decision with regards to your services.
@Brian: We agree that we’re nowhere near done dealing with this. Lots more changes are on the way–some planned, some coming out of this discussion.
Historically we have tried to reach out to companies, but the problem is that most companies (at least on the software/startup side) either do not publicize their direct contact, or have catchall email addresses that are sort of black holes. I have a vague recollection of one of us sending an email to Omnigroup because a.) we’re fans, and b.) it was one of the early companies added. Most of these messages that we sent are ignored. Most companies that respond to companies that are started by their customers do so because they are pinged by google alerts, technorati, etc.
You *can* change your company url, but we just realized (thanks to you) that the captions are confusing. Up at the top is an uneditable link which is your Get Satisfaction url (i.e. getsatisfaction.com/omnigroup), and down at the bottom are any other links you want to include, such as main company url. These are all editable and deletable.
The logo should be easier to turn off, but you can replace this with an invisible image to turn off logo entirely. I can do this for you if you like.
As for the 90% number–it wasn’t always this way. When we started the number was closer to 40%, and has steadily ticked up since.
Brian,
To clarify: I have historically reached out and contacted a large number of companies — in particular ones that are added by customers, but as Thor says, I don’t often get a response. Actually, it is quite rare that I do get a response.
Also, we have been getting about 80-90 new companies added each day, on average, and the vast majority have been added by company owners (who also simultaneously “claim” it as the admin). I’d say the 90% number is probably higher from my own personal observation as the person who reviews and approves these company listings. But, that’s really my anecdotal observation.
Hope this helps.
You’re whole business model is around brand infringement. 37Signals was right in everything they said and you should just be happy they don’t take legal action.
I hope you do take the comments to heart. 37Signals is a company whose business model you should admire. They have it going on.
Wow, I get that companies need positions, but Jason is outta line. I’m a big fan of 37S and GS, use them both actively, so its no fun to wade the marsh.
Every-thing’s been said, but here’s the bottom line. The burden of getting support falls on the person requesting it. Who cares if the logo or company info is there. If you leave Basecamp and go search the web for customer support, then yah, might not be the real thing. Same as all of the Nike merch I’ve seen in Vietnam, you gotta check your sources to know if its real. The other clear president is the legality of brand protection. You have to actively protect your trademarks to keep them. It seems like a close parallel; you need to actively meet the needs of your customers to keep them happy. Yes this is a polarizing issue, but I would think a web-minded company would embrace any medium that someone approaches with, even if they used the side door with the sign that says “Use the front entrance please”
I’m just a voyeur in this situation, my only contact with GS is using their product via RescueTime’s support forum (officially sanctioned by the company in this case), and it seemed to work great.
The part that smells fishy to me is GS’ claim that it was resolved by a simple change by a copy editor.
If you employ professional copy editors, it makes it more likely that the original language was calculated. Also the original language favored GS by making companies feel like they should jump on board or risk looking like uncaring brutes. If I owned GS I would prefer the original language if I could get away with it.
I also am astonished that GS would *ever* use another company’s trademark or branding in any way, or allow their community to upload 3rd party corporate logos, etc. If this is indeed true, perhaps you should fire a few of those copy editors and hire a decent lawyer?