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When we decided to make a change to the Zendesk pricing structure for our existing customers, we tried to be as thoughtful, transparent, and straightforward as

When we decided to make a change to the Zendesk pricing structure for our existing customers, we tried to be as thoughtful, transparent, and straightforward as possible. Transparent? Maybe you should've given your customers a warning first..? While the letter is certainly worded very nicely (and carefully), it reeks more of damage control than sincerity. The picture with the puppy dog face puts it way over the top.

mcantor 16y ago
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.
- epochwolf 16y ago
  > 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-specific because they address everyone. Then again, if I want to be cynical, it's possible that that person (not specific to jimboyoungblood) just won't except any apology as adequate.
  - jimboyoungblood 16y ago
    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.
    - epochwolf 16y ago
      > so there's nothing I could have "wanted" out of their 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.)
  - nickpleis 16y ago
    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 first place. At this point, having seen this play out over and over again, the whole thing does seem to lack sincerity. I'm tired of people thinking "it's better to ask forgiveness than permission" as a properly moral way to conduct business.
    - epochwolf 16y ago
      > 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. Selection bias perhaps? This isn't anything new.
- jimboyoungblood 16y ago
  For the lack of a better answer, it sets off my spidey sense. Everything is too nicely worded- there is nothing spontaneous or "real" about it. Imagine if you were hearing those words spoken in person. I don't think they'd ring true. The photo really is the kicker. Nobody has a photo like that just sitting around on their computer. Obviously a lot of effort, from a number of people, went into producing and editing this blog post. Do you believe the same, obviously skilled, team that produced this finely crafted apology could have unintentionally introduced a pricing structure that jacked up the bill for many of their customers? I'm honestly surprised that so many people fell for it.
  - wolfish 16y ago
    Spiderman, just because a thing takes effort and is well done, does not mean it is insincere.
    - jimboyoungblood 16y ago
      Just my opinion. It's okay to disagree, you know?
  - mcantor 16y ago
    I still don't get it, dude. What could they have written in that blog post which would have rang true to you?
    - jimboyoungblood 16y ago
      It's not the "what", but the "how". It doesn't matter anyhow- obviously the apology worked. All the pitchforks have been traded in for hugs and kisses already.
    - parfe 16y ago
      >Instead of our intended result, many of you read my Tuesday e-mail and thought, “You want to send me a big bill for something that I didn’t order and haven’t agreed to? WTF?” The above line makes no sense. The apology never actually mentions what the "intended result" was. The intended change was exactly what the customer thought it was. Zendesk intended the result to be the customers just shut up and take it. Zendesk just couldn't cope with the customer reaction.
- parfe 16y ago
  Well for one thing pissing off your customers is not "letting them down." It's pissing them off. Side stepping the fact in the "apology" is like a little kid apologizing for something because he knows it is a required action. Not because he's sorry. This company is sorry that the customers got angry and forced the pricing change. They are not sorry for "letting them down"
  - kristiandupont 16y ago
    Interesting - I never thought of it before, but does it even make any sense to apologize for something that you did intentionally? It is what we force children to do, but mostly because it is a part of a sound upbringing. If you spill coffee on someone, an apology makes perfect sense. You caused someone harm and you acknowledge that, but it wasn't intentional. However, if you steal from someone, saying that you are sorry is not as simple; why did you do it in the first place, then?
    - SoftwareMaven 16y ago
      While I do force my kids to apologize on occasion, more as a way of teaching that when you hurt somebody (either intentionally or not), you should try to make it better and an apology is part of that, I know what they are thinking: "Yeah, I'm sorry. Sorry I got caught!"
    - techiferous 16y ago
      We use apologies as a cheap substitute for empathy. A wronged party would like to know that you see their hurt and if you could do it all over again you wouldn't because of that hurt.
- hyperbovine 16y ago
  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 through the roof as a result of the new pricing. This is an apology for carelessness, but the real issue is greed. That is why it strikes me as insincere.
  - techiferous 16y ago
    So what would an appropriate apology look like?
    - robryan 16y ago
      By apology time it is already to late, they would have lost the trust of many customers. I'm assuming they didn't just come up with these prices overnight. I think the apology makes them look worse, like they never justified the prices in the first place. Keeping them may have lost customers but would have shown they were carefully chosen and justified prices. Now it just feels like they were trying to bleed there customers for as much as they could get.
- jodrellblank 16y ago
  How do you spend two and a half years "putting your customers first" and not realise that a 300% price increase would annoy them? for those customers who took action this week to convert to an extended billing cycle, please contact us if you would like to revert back to the billing cycle that you held as of Monday isn't putting customers first, it's putting employee convenience first. Find the customers who converted to an extended billing cycle, contact them and offer to revert them even if it's inconvenient. That's putting them first. Which they claim to be doing but aren't.
WiseWeasel 16y ago
That was the warning. The pricing change doesn't go into effect until July 1st, I believe.
- nickpleis 16y ago
  That's not a lot of warning for folks who are using a product like ZenDesk. The whole point is that a tool like this is embedded into your companies work flows. To leave ZenDesk means that you have to find a new product. Figure out how to move all of your data into that new product. Figure out how to handle tickets that are still in process on July 1. Train your staff. Change any customer facing UI or other automated bits that utilize ZenDesk. The product is the type of product that inherently has a lot of lock-in. Giving me a month and a half to change all of that is more or less equivalent to making the changes effective tomorrow.

mcantor 16y ago

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.

epochwolf 16y ago
> 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-specific because they address everyone. Then again, if I want to be cynical, it's possible that that person (not specific to jimboyoungblood) just won't except any apology as adequate.
- jimboyoungblood 16y ago
  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.
  - epochwolf 16y ago
    > so there's nothing I could have "wanted" out of their 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.)
- nickpleis 16y ago
  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 first place. At this point, having seen this play out over and over again, the whole thing does seem to lack sincerity. I'm tired of people thinking "it's better to ask forgiveness than permission" as a properly moral way to conduct business.
  - epochwolf 16y ago
    > 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. Selection bias perhaps? This isn't anything new.
jimboyoungblood 16y ago
For the lack of a better answer, it sets off my spidey sense. Everything is too nicely worded- there is nothing spontaneous or "real" about it. Imagine if you were hearing those words spoken in person. I don't think they'd ring true. The photo really is the kicker. Nobody has a photo like that just sitting around on their computer. Obviously a lot of effort, from a number of people, went into producing and editing this blog post. Do you believe the same, obviously skilled, team that produced this finely crafted apology could have unintentionally introduced a pricing structure that jacked up the bill for many of their customers? I'm honestly surprised that so many people fell for it.
- wolfish 16y ago
  Spiderman, just because a thing takes effort and is well done, does not mean it is insincere.
  - jimboyoungblood 16y ago
    Just my opinion. It's okay to disagree, you know?
- mcantor 16y ago
  I still don't get it, dude. What could they have written in that blog post which would have rang true to you?
  - jimboyoungblood 16y ago
    It's not the "what", but the "how". It doesn't matter anyhow- obviously the apology worked. All the pitchforks have been traded in for hugs and kisses already.
  - parfe 16y ago
    >Instead of our intended result, many of you read my Tuesday e-mail and thought, “You want to send me a big bill for something that I didn’t order and haven’t agreed to? WTF?” The above line makes no sense. The apology never actually mentions what the "intended result" was. The intended change was exactly what the customer thought it was. Zendesk intended the result to be the customers just shut up and take it. Zendesk just couldn't cope with the customer reaction.
parfe 16y ago
Well for one thing pissing off your customers is not "letting them down." It's pissing them off. Side stepping the fact in the "apology" is like a little kid apologizing for something because he knows it is a required action. Not because he's sorry. This company is sorry that the customers got angry and forced the pricing change. They are not sorry for "letting them down"
- kristiandupont 16y ago
  Interesting - I never thought of it before, but does it even make any sense to apologize for something that you did intentionally? It is what we force children to do, but mostly because it is a part of a sound upbringing. If you spill coffee on someone, an apology makes perfect sense. You caused someone harm and you acknowledge that, but it wasn't intentional. However, if you steal from someone, saying that you are sorry is not as simple; why did you do it in the first place, then?
  - SoftwareMaven 16y ago
    While I do force my kids to apologize on occasion, more as a way of teaching that when you hurt somebody (either intentionally or not), you should try to make it better and an apology is part of that, I know what they are thinking: "Yeah, I'm sorry. Sorry I got caught!"
  - techiferous 16y ago
    We use apologies as a cheap substitute for empathy. A wronged party would like to know that you see their hurt and if you could do it all over again you wouldn't because of that hurt.
hyperbovine 16y ago
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 through the roof as a result of the new pricing. This is an apology for carelessness, but the real issue is greed. That is why it strikes me as insincere.
- techiferous 16y ago
  So what would an appropriate apology look like?
  - robryan 16y ago
    By apology time it is already to late, they would have lost the trust of many customers. I'm assuming they didn't just come up with these prices overnight. I think the apology makes them look worse, like they never justified the prices in the first place. Keeping them may have lost customers but would have shown they were carefully chosen and justified prices. Now it just feels like they were trying to bleed there customers for as much as they could get.
jodrellblank 16y ago
How do you spend two and a half years "putting your customers first" and not realise that a 300% price increase would annoy them? for those customers who took action this week to convert to an extended billing cycle, please contact us if you would like to revert back to the billing cycle that you held as of Monday isn't putting customers first, it's putting employee convenience first. Find the customers who converted to an extended billing cycle, contact them and offer to revert them even if it's inconvenient. That's putting them first. Which they claim to be doing but aren't.

WiseWeasel 16y ago

That was the warning. The pricing change doesn't go into effect until July 1st, I believe.

nickpleis 16y ago
That's not a lot of warning for folks who are using a product like ZenDesk. The whole point is that a tool like this is embedded into your companies work flows. To leave ZenDesk means that you have to find a new product. Figure out how to move all of your data into that new product. Figure out how to handle tickets that are still in process on July 1. Train your staff. Change any customer facing UI or other automated bits that utilize ZenDesk. The product is the type of product that inherently has a lot of lock-in. Giving me a month and a half to change all of that is more or less equivalent to making the changes effective tomorrow.