Ask HN: Best/worst stories re. startups communicating with users
Managing user expectations can be tricky as a startup grows from, say, 20 users to product-market fit. What startups (I'm most interested in web startups, but any will do) have done this well? Poorly? Why and how?
10 comments
Here's one bit of bad communication I'll throw in, and unrelated to the current brouhaha.
Some time ago, I signed up to FogBugz. A few weeks later, I got an email from... omg! Joel Spolsky!
I thought that was pretty awesome, that he got in touch with all his users to see how they were getting on. Great way to build strong customer relationships. Of course the initial email was probably automated, but the intention was there.
I took a good 20 minutes or so to write a fairly detailed but concise, 4-5 paragraph email listing some of the things I thought could be improved about Fogbugz from a start-up point of view.
I got a reply the next day, from some intern who basically explained how they wouldn't do each of the 4 points I'd raised. Not even "we'll look into it" or "it's on the plans, but I can't tell you when it'll come out". Just no, no, no, no. Basically, an email that not only had nothing to do with Joel Spolsky, but clearly had been delegated to someone who didn't yet have basic customer service sense.
With that, Spolsky lost all the credit he got in that first initial email, and then some.
Since then, I've copied the Spolsky approach. All our users get an email from me, two weeks after they join, asking how they're doing. But I am the one receiving and responding to that email.
Some time ago, I signed up to FogBugz. A few weeks later, I got an email from... omg! Joel Spolsky!
I thought that was pretty awesome, that he got in touch with all his users to see how they were getting on. Great way to build strong customer relationships. Of course the initial email was probably automated, but the intention was there.
I took a good 20 minutes or so to write a fairly detailed but concise, 4-5 paragraph email listing some of the things I thought could be improved about Fogbugz from a start-up point of view.
I got a reply the next day, from some intern who basically explained how they wouldn't do each of the 4 points I'd raised. Not even "we'll look into it" or "it's on the plans, but I can't tell you when it'll come out". Just no, no, no, no. Basically, an email that not only had nothing to do with Joel Spolsky, but clearly had been delegated to someone who didn't yet have basic customer service sense.
With that, Spolsky lost all the credit he got in that first initial email, and then some.
Since then, I've copied the Spolsky approach. All our users get an email from me, two weeks after they join, asking how they're doing. But I am the one receiving and responding to that email.
That's a great way of doing it.
I take all of our customer support 'problem' cases, that's where you can make the difference and where you get to hear what's up with your service so you can make it better.
This usually amounts to maybe one or two such cases per week so work-wise it's small fry but it really helps keeping your head close to what the users are experiencing.
And the problem cases are the ones where you learn fastest.
The other day there was a 'support is sales' post here that was really good.
I take all of our customer support 'problem' cases, that's where you can make the difference and where you get to hear what's up with your service so you can make it better.
This usually amounts to maybe one or two such cases per week so work-wise it's small fry but it really helps keeping your head close to what the users are experiencing.
And the problem cases are the ones where you learn fastest.
The other day there was a 'support is sales' post here that was really good.
Thanks, I had missed that post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1354463
Actually, I do get several responses a day, but most of them are, thankfully, positive.
Here's an example received today:
I wasn’t sure how to access the plans, but once I figured that out I have had no trouble since.
I think about 10-15% of the people who sign up and confirm their account end up replying to me.
Here's an example received today:
I wasn’t sure how to access the plans, but once I figured that out I have had no trouble since.
I think about 10-15% of the people who sign up and confirm their account end up replying to me.
Are you thinking ahead to when there are too many new signups for you to continue? I don't mean that accusatively. There are good reasons not to think that far ahead.
When I can't handle it anymore, there's a number of things I can do.
1) Make the emails more random - if I only send half the emails, it stands to reason that I'll only get half the responses!
2) Stop sending them! There are other ways to gather feedback that may work better later.
I haven't spent too long worrying about this, though. It'll be a good problem to have.
1) Make the emails more random - if I only send half the emails, it stands to reason that I'll only get half the responses!
2) Stop sending them! There are other ways to gather feedback that may work better later.
I haven't spent too long worrying about this, though. It'll be a good problem to have.
Did it ever occur to you that they have looked at your requests months before you sent them in, and decided not to do them for a good reason? Most people do not come up with unuqie suggestions.
Of course it did. But there are a lot of ways to say no without sounding dismissive - I'm more offended by the fact that some intern responded to my email (that was a reply to a purported personal email) than by the fact they declined my suggestions.
I also think it's unlikely that the intern actually weighed his argument and decided against it, and would have been in a position to make it happen had his arguments convinced him. Most likely he was told which features would not be implemented and is spewing that out to customers.
Please re-read my post: looked at your requests months before you sent them in, and decided not to do them.
I have many users asking for things and they usually ask for them same things - things I already decided not to do. Sometimes after many requests I change my mind, but only one of the people gets the email "you're right I changed my mind" and everyone who came before him gets "I thought about this and decided against it".
It's impossible to have a popular product and not be in this situation.
I have many users asking for things and they usually ask for them same things - things I already decided not to do. Sometimes after many requests I change my mind, but only one of the people gets the email "you're right I changed my mind" and everyone who came before him gets "I thought about this and decided against it".
It's impossible to have a popular product and not be in this situation.
I think posterous are really good at communicating with users. A few times I wanted to switch to wordpress due to some missing feature or the other, but then when I said my complaint on twitter I'd get a message with some time line and it would keep me happy...for a while.
WakeMate are pretty bad at communicating and if I were them I'd hire someone whose job was really only to communicate.
Apple are pretty good at communicating nowadays and if you are doing well on their platform.
Microsoft is really good at communicating with developers. All their dev team are on twitter and blogging and you can reach them by email, and there are docs about everything, etc.
Google is terrible at communicating. Do they even communicate? They just never reply.
Facebook has the same problem. Don't reply. Probably too many users.
WakeMate are pretty bad at communicating and if I were them I'd hire someone whose job was really only to communicate.
Apple are pretty good at communicating nowadays and if you are doing well on their platform.
Microsoft is really good at communicating with developers. All their dev team are on twitter and blogging and you can reach them by email, and there are docs about everything, etc.
Google is terrible at communicating. Do they even communicate? They just never reply.
Facebook has the same problem. Don't reply. Probably too many users.
I co-founded a startup called NetWinner. It was a casino style online game that allowed users to win prizes. Everything was absolutely free and users never paid. They just watched ads while they played the game and they could instantly win gift cards and cash prizes.
When the economy started to tank our ad revenues tanked and the model as it was could no longer be supported. So we changed it so that users won raffle tickets for prizes instead of winning prizes directly.
We did not message this to our users well and the BBB got over 250 complaints about the change we made. It was covered on local TV in charlotte, NC and lots of other bad stuff happened. They could never take legal action because they never paid but they still tried. They posted stuff all over the web about how we cheated and scammed them out of the prizes they won (which we did). I was just the technical co-founder and did not have a vote in financial decisions but since I owned the domain people thought I was the head guy and came after me. Good thing it was always free to play.
When the economy started to tank our ad revenues tanked and the model as it was could no longer be supported. So we changed it so that users won raffle tickets for prizes instead of winning prizes directly.
We did not message this to our users well and the BBB got over 250 complaints about the change we made. It was covered on local TV in charlotte, NC and lots of other bad stuff happened. They could never take legal action because they never paid but they still tried. They posted stuff all over the web about how we cheated and scammed them out of the prizes they won (which we did). I was just the technical co-founder and did not have a vote in financial decisions but since I owned the domain people thought I was the head guy and came after me. Good thing it was always free to play.
What did you do to get the message to users, and what more would you do knowing what you know now?
We sent them an email after we pushed the change live. If I could do it over again I would send them an email a week in advance and funnel all the complaints to our support team. The biggest mistake was having nowhere for them to complain because then they took to fb, twitter etc...
This comes to mind as a particularly shoddy episode:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1358446
There is an answer embedded in there:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1358624
It's a pity that the company actually took the opportunity to communicate with their users and that because of killing the story the response will not be seen by many.
Their customers should probably read that second link.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1358446
There is an answer embedded in there:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1358624
It's a pity that the company actually took the opportunity to communicate with their users and that because of killing the story the response will not be seen by many.
Their customers should probably read that second link.
I don't think the second comment you link to is by the Wakemates.
Possible. The only way to rule that out is to have wakemate post something on their blog, it seems they're due for an update anyway. Maybe you could ask them ? And they could post that update on HN, I think it would do a world of good, whatever the news. Leaving your customers hanging is not a good thing.
Actually the easiest way to rule it out is to call them, which I just did. That comment was not posted by anyone from Wakemate.
So are they going to do any kind of end-user communication in the near future?
Their credibility is at stake here, and your squelching of the discussion does not help matters imho.
edit: And the only reason people get to play pretending they're wakemate is because wakemate does not communicate regularly in the first place.
edit2: wakemate really sets themselves up for trouble, this part of their blog especially is troublesome:
"In the coming weeks, we’re going to be more active on the blog, publishing photos, screenshots, and videos of what we’ve been working on. Hopefully this will help assuage some fears that the product is “vaporware” and get our pre-order customers as excited for the next wave of shipments as we are."
And that was on the 26th of April, total radiosilence since then. If you promise activity in 'the coming weeks' then you should show some. I'm really not surprised by the posting that was originally done, and in fact I think that person should be commended for their restraint rather than to see their post deleted.
Their credibility is at stake here, and your squelching of the discussion does not help matters imho.
edit: And the only reason people get to play pretending they're wakemate is because wakemate does not communicate regularly in the first place.
edit2: wakemate really sets themselves up for trouble, this part of their blog especially is troublesome:
"In the coming weeks, we’re going to be more active on the blog, publishing photos, screenshots, and videos of what we’ve been working on. Hopefully this will help assuage some fears that the product is “vaporware” and get our pre-order customers as excited for the next wave of shipments as we are."
And that was on the 26th of April, total radiosilence since then. If you promise activity in 'the coming weeks' then you should show some. I'm really not surprised by the posting that was originally done, and in fact I think that person should be commended for their restraint rather than to see their post deleted.
Man, I like a lot of your comments, but sometimes it seems to me that you cross the line into being a busybody.
I'd like to be more communicative about my startup too. The reason I don't is that I'm spending all my energy working on the product. These things are hard. We are finite.
Wakemate don't owe anybody anything who hasn't given them money, and if anyone who has is unhappy, I'd be shocked if Wakemate wouldn't be eager to give them their money back. Sometimes it seems like what people are really buying with their 5 bucks or 50 or whatever is the feeling that they have the right to kick up a stink.
I'd like to be more communicative about my startup too. The reason I don't is that I'm spending all my energy working on the product. These things are hard. We are finite.
Wakemate don't owe anybody anything who hasn't given them money, and if anyone who has is unhappy, I'd be shocked if Wakemate wouldn't be eager to give them their money back. Sometimes it seems like what people are really buying with their 5 bucks or 50 or whatever is the feeling that they have the right to kick up a stink.
> Man, I like a lot of your comments
Thanks! It's mutual by the way.
> but sometimes it seems to me that you cross the line into being a busybody
Possibly. But I'm not going to fall over and roll on my back just because it is PG that does something.
Wakemate has a great chance to manage their image here and PG has essentially thrown that away.
> I'd like to be more communicative about my startup too. The reason I don't is that I'm spending all my energy working on the product.
I've worked for enough start-ups to know that you need to do everything right, not just work on your product. If you spend all your energy on that - and you've signed up customers for pre-order - I suggest you do something about it before you copy wakemates mistakes. It's really a pity, I've seen them go from having a ton of goodwill to essentially being damaged goods.
That's wasteful.
And to see PG squelch discussion about a YC company when he's fine with us discussing everything else under the sun is for want of a better description less than elegant, especially if HN has been used as a venue to get initial customers. Another reason why it is bad to do so is because we can all learn from each others mistakes and to see bad stuff discussed in public is a learning experience for all, not just for the company involved.
You simply can't launch off HN and rely on us to do our bit with passing word of mouth to friends if there is an interesting new YC start-up and hit the mute button if there is a legitimate concern by a HN member regarding non-performance by said company. That's what causes the stink.
People that put their $5 or $50 down have a reasonably expectation of in order:
The OP wasn't trying to kick up a stink, he was simply a concerned customer. And given the way PG handled it now he probably went from 'disappointed' to something a few steps lower than that.
Thanks! It's mutual by the way.
> but sometimes it seems to me that you cross the line into being a busybody
Possibly. But I'm not going to fall over and roll on my back just because it is PG that does something.
Wakemate has a great chance to manage their image here and PG has essentially thrown that away.
> I'd like to be more communicative about my startup too. The reason I don't is that I'm spending all my energy working on the product.
I've worked for enough start-ups to know that you need to do everything right, not just work on your product. If you spend all your energy on that - and you've signed up customers for pre-order - I suggest you do something about it before you copy wakemates mistakes. It's really a pity, I've seen them go from having a ton of goodwill to essentially being damaged goods.
That's wasteful.
And to see PG squelch discussion about a YC company when he's fine with us discussing everything else under the sun is for want of a better description less than elegant, especially if HN has been used as a venue to get initial customers. Another reason why it is bad to do so is because we can all learn from each others mistakes and to see bad stuff discussed in public is a learning experience for all, not just for the company involved.
You simply can't launch off HN and rely on us to do our bit with passing word of mouth to friends if there is an interesting new YC start-up and hit the mute button if there is a legitimate concern by a HN member regarding non-performance by said company. That's what causes the stink.
People that put their $5 or $50 down have a reasonably expectation of in order:
- a product
- failing that to be kept in the loop
- if all else fails their money back or an explanation
The OP wasn't trying to kick up a stink, he was simply a concerned customer. And given the way PG handled it now he probably went from 'disappointed' to something a few steps lower than that.
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I use Disqus on my personal blog for comments. On one of my more popular posts (I got just over 100 comments the first day, so nothing crazy), the comments would disappear after a few hours. If I logged into Disqus, I could still see every comment and they all said they were "approved" and posted. But you'd load the blog post and nothing older than 3 hours would show up.
Wouldn't you know, that post ended up experiencing the Reddit effect, and more comments came pouring in. I tried to contact Disqus, but all I got was a ticket number. Meanwhile, the Reddit users had already started having a field day with, "Steve censors his readers and and deletes comments! We don't like his blog anymore."
Disqus was very slow and unhelpful in resolving the bug, even as I frantically updated the ticket with more and more debugging info and speculation as to what the problem could possibly be. In fact, to this day they've still never fixed the bug or closed out the ticket. Technically, they closed the tickets, but never resolved them (I guess that means, "we got this guy to stop bugging us about this issue... CASE CLOSED").
I ended up having to log into my disqus.com account, copy and paste the comments into an HTML file, then upload the file to my blog and link to it at the bottom of the post.
I understand they're providing a free service and thus have little to no accountability. But when you create a service that asks users to entrust their readers' voices and reputations to you, you should make an honest effort to live up to that responsibility.
[EDIT: Disqus is now helping me to resolve the problem. Better late than never! :-) ]
Wouldn't you know, that post ended up experiencing the Reddit effect, and more comments came pouring in. I tried to contact Disqus, but all I got was a ticket number. Meanwhile, the Reddit users had already started having a field day with, "Steve censors his readers and and deletes comments! We don't like his blog anymore."
Disqus was very slow and unhelpful in resolving the bug, even as I frantically updated the ticket with more and more debugging info and speculation as to what the problem could possibly be. In fact, to this day they've still never fixed the bug or closed out the ticket. Technically, they closed the tickets, but never resolved them (I guess that means, "we got this guy to stop bugging us about this issue... CASE CLOSED").
I ended up having to log into my disqus.com account, copy and paste the comments into an HTML file, then upload the file to my blog and link to it at the bottom of the post.
I understand they're providing a free service and thus have little to no accountability. But when you create a service that asks users to entrust their readers' voices and reputations to you, you should make an honest effort to live up to that responsibility.
[EDIT: Disqus is now helping me to resolve the problem. Better late than never! :-) ]
That's awful and I'm sorry. When was this? We've been making changes to how we handle support to better address problems like this and it sucks that you were shafted here.
Since Disqus is a service used on sites (and not contained in our own world), our support inquiries come from both website owners and their audiences and involve so many different scenarios. So we need to better educate users on how things work first of all. But that support volume made finding real bug reports or big issues hard (I just posted a HN comment about using our support software earlier today). We've made some changes here though.
This also pains me because we try really hard for great interaction with users, even calling up users to help them figure things out. We're definitely closer to a more holistic solution in this area.
(P.S. the most likely reason for your issue is perhaps you changed your post's permalink URL so Disqus could no longer find the right association. Still our fault, but that's an explanation if you still care to wonder.)
Since Disqus is a service used on sites (and not contained in our own world), our support inquiries come from both website owners and their audiences and involve so many different scenarios. So we need to better educate users on how things work first of all. But that support volume made finding real bug reports or big issues hard (I just posted a HN comment about using our support software earlier today). We've made some changes here though.
This also pains me because we try really hard for great interaction with users, even calling up users to help them figure things out. We're definitely closer to a more holistic solution in this area.
(P.S. the most likely reason for your issue is perhaps you changed your post's permalink URL so Disqus could no longer find the right association. Still our fault, but that's an explanation if you still care to wonder.)
Hey Steve,
I'm sorry to hear that you've had a bad experience with our support. What was your ticket number? I'd be more than happy to help you figure this out, shoot me an email here: [email protected]
-Giannii
I'm sorry to hear that you've had a bad experience with our support. What was your ticket number? I'd be more than happy to help you figure this out, shoot me an email here: [email protected]
-Giannii
Thanks Giannii. Just so everyone knows, it looks like Giannii and I have gotten this close to solved over IRC now. +1 for Disqus's new support.
Good communication: Daniel Ha of Disqus. Why? Not sugarcoating, e.g. "Importing is possible, though admittedly harder than it should be.". How? Twitter and Disqus mostly. I bet he's using backtype and google alerts.
(Warning, slow page) http://friendfeed.com/search?q=from%3Adanielha+help
(Warning, slow page) http://friendfeed.com/search?q=from%3Adanielha+help
I can think of a startup that recently screwed this up quite badly, though this second time it's not really their fault I think (I don't know the whole story, just seen that someone's been covering up the discussion, which is generally not a great starting point).
I wrote about the first time they screwed up, as a kind of "Learning" post, on my blog. It did quite well here (to show that not all negative posts get killed).
I wrote about the first time they screwed up, as a kind of "Learning" post, on my blog. It did quite well here (to show that not all negative posts get killed).
Reading between the lines, I guess you are alluding to the specific example jacquesm & swombat refer to - but as a straight answer to the question, I'd say twitter's 'fail whale' was a fun way to take the edge off their frequent early downtime.
I was disappointed that the wakemate posts got killed because they touch upon this question, so yes, that is what inspired this post. It turns out that the wakemate thread is the least interesting one here. I'm overall very pleased with the comments.
You're very right about the fail whale. Although not 100% successful in changing the emotion associated with downtime from frustration to amusement, it went an amazingly long way.
You're very right about the fail whale. Although not 100% successful in changing the emotion associated with downtime from frustration to amusement, it went an amazingly long way.
I really, really like how www.lollyphile.com is communicating. Not very start-uppy, but very honest, up-front and providing lots and lots of value to customers. Just last week, they sent their entire mailing list an email with a 25% off code: becauseitsmondaysowhynot. Their writing is incredibly entertaining as well.
Another is www.influads.com who have been extremely open in their finances and process and at least with me, have gathered a lot of respect.
Poorly? Well, had I known posting that Wakemate post would give this much trouble, I wouldn't have done it. This doesn't excuse Wakemate themselves, though.
Another is www.influads.com who have been extremely open in their finances and process and at least with me, have gathered a lot of respect.
Poorly? Well, had I known posting that Wakemate post would give this much trouble, I wouldn't have done it. This doesn't excuse Wakemate themselves, though.
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