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"If a former Apple executive who works down the road from Theranos can't get a reasonable response, makes me wonder if Theranos ever addressed customer/client c

by larrys 11y ago

"If a former Apple executive who works down the road from Theranos can't get a reasonable response, makes me wonder if Theranos ever addressed customer/client concerns?" A few possibilities (in all fairness to Theranos) 1) Elizabeth Holmes doesn't know who Jean-Louis Gassée is..(noting her age). 2) She gets a ton of email and didn't see who wrote the email. So it could have been from anyone and unless for some reason she had noted the name in the reply address (and it was more than "jlg@") she would have just passed on it. 3) She forwarded it for someone to handle (given 1&2 above) and they haven't acted on it yet. Noting JLG says "You can guess what happened: Nothing, no response." but doesn't specify if he waited 1 day or 4 weeks.

kqr2 11y ago
Actually he mentions that he ran Apple's Engineering directly in his email: I’m also a techie and, among other things in 47 years in the tech industry, I once ran Apple’s Engineering in Cupertino.
danso 11y ago
It's true, but we don't know to whom he addressed the email...was it the general info@theranos.com email address? To Theranos's PR team? Or to a private direct email address that JLG was able to get? I would guess it'd be the latter 2...JLG has been writing about media/tech long enough to know that sending an email to the general contact form is not adequate, and he doesn't seem the type to be out for a hit-piece (i.e. "I am publishing an exposé in 1 hour, please respond"). And Holmes and her media people obviously are reachable -- besides maintaining Twitter accounts, Holmes was doing interviews the day after the WSJ piece (nevermind all of the PR she was doing in the past two weeks).
Pyxl101 11y ago
This is why senior leaders have executive assistants. C-level execs of large companies get a lot of email and don't read all of it themselves, at least not initially, especially if the email is from someone they don't know. Emailing a large company's leader from the outside is and should be tantamount to emailing a part of their customer service team, if you are a customer. At least, that's how they need to arrange it if they want to be responsive and are failing to be. Good customer service will also escalate complaints internally so that they're properly dealt with, not just responded to (though they might be escalated to a subordinate of the person you intended to contact, rather than the person themselves). If someone emails your CEO, it's a fair bet that they're either really happy, or really unhappy and need attention, versus contacting frontline support. Companies that have good customer service typically have an "executive customer service" team made up of their best CS reps, who have good judgment and can handle unusual situations. Executive CS would for sure research and discover who sent the communication, and consider that fact as part of their response, and how to escalate it internally. To summarize, if a company cares about providing customer service, they can certainly do so, and they should look at email sent to their public figureheads as an extension of their customer service responsibility, or a delegated responsibility to the CEO's assistant. There is no excuse for the lack of response. This is also true for internal communication within a company, by the way. It's routine for assistants to respond on behalf of the person they support for matters that are within their area of responsibility. One of the marks of a higher grade executive assistant is that you can trust them with all of your communication, and can trust them to decide on their own what they can properly respond to on your behalf.

by larrys 11y ago

kqr2 11y ago

Actually he mentions that he ran Apple's Engineering directly in his email: I’m also a techie and, among other things in 47 years in the tech industry, I once ran Apple’s Engineering in Cupertino.

danso 11y ago

It's true, but we don't know to whom he addressed the email...was it the general info@theranos.com email address? To Theranos's PR team? Or to a private direct email address that JLG was able to get? I would guess it'd be the latter 2...JLG has been writing about media/tech long enough to know that sending an email to the general contact form is not adequate, and he doesn't seem the type to be out for a hit-piece (i.e. "I am publishing an exposé in 1 hour, please respond"). And Holmes and her media people obviously are reachable -- besides maintaining Twitter accounts, Holmes was doing interviews the day after the WSJ piece (nevermind all of the PR she was doing in the past two weeks).

Pyxl101 11y ago

This is why senior leaders have executive assistants. C-level execs of large companies get a lot of email and don't read all of it themselves, at least not initially, especially if the email is from someone they don't know. Emailing a large company's leader from the outside is and should be tantamount to emailing a part of their customer service team, if you are a customer. At least, that's how they need to arrange it if they want to be responsive and are failing to be. Good customer service will also escalate complaints internally so that they're properly dealt with, not just responded to (though they might be escalated to a subordinate of the person you intended to contact, rather than the person themselves). If someone emails your CEO, it's a fair bet that they're either really happy, or really unhappy and need attention, versus contacting frontline support. Companies that have good customer service typically have an "executive customer service" team made up of their best CS reps, who have good judgment and can handle unusual situations. Executive CS would for sure research and discover who sent the communication, and consider that fact as part of their response, and how to escalate it internally. To summarize, if a company cares about providing customer service, they can certainly do so, and they should look at email sent to their public figureheads as an extension of their customer service responsibility, or a delegated responsibility to the CEO's assistant. There is no excuse for the lack of response. This is also true for internal communication within a company, by the way. It's routine for assistants to respond on behalf of the person they support for matters that are within their area of responsibility. One of the marks of a higher grade executive assistant is that you can trust them with all of your communication, and can trust them to decide on their own what they can properly respond to on your behalf.