5 ms·
37signals support satisfaction ratings now public
- fredoliveira 16y agoI have to give it to these guys (I work on a competitor product). Even though this is a simple idea and possibly something of trivial implementation, it's clear, honest, and just plain nice. My hat is off to them for keeping their customers happy - very well done.
- trustfundbaby 16y agoWhat product do you work on?
- fredoliveira 16y agoI don't want to pee on anyone's parade - I honestly don't - so I would hate to link to it here, even though it's "competition". I'll link to it on my profile instead. (Never imagined me writing this, actually, but I think it makes sense. I truly do admire these folks for this particular project - I wish I had thought of it myself, I'll tell you that)
- frossie 16y agoIf you mean webreakstuff.com, may I gently suggest you have a landing page that does not make explicit reference to 2010...
- fredoliveira 16y agoI don't, but I appreciate the note. Will update (we've been busy - a good thing).
- allwein 16y agoI wish that I could click on the individual smiley faces and find out the facts of the statuses. For some reason it's driving me nuts that I don't know why the frowny faces are unhappy.
- jasonfried 16y agoWe have access to that, but we can't share it since the comments often include confidential information. The biggest source of unhappiness is when we can't deliver a feature request immediately.
- xbryanx 16y agoGah! Their support email example uses two! exclamation marks! I'd! be torn as to whether to give them a grimace or a frown on that point alone!!
- marcamillion 16y agoHrmm...not to be disgusting, but you would take a live example of a company doing right by their customers to rain on their parade because they used two exclamation marks instead of one? sigh Sometimes people can make mountains out of molehills.
- j_baker 16y agoBear in mind that I say this as one of the biggest grammar nazis I know: Who the fuck cares?
- xbryanx 16y agoThen I guess you don't know the grammarians I know.
- cfontes 16y agoThis is a company I would definitely would like to work. Always innovating and with some very nice products.
- sudonim 16y agoThe subtle dig at getsatisfaction was interesting. (For history: http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1650-get-satisfaction-or-else http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1650-get-satisfaction-or-else ). This is a good show of selective transparency. The last 100 should serve to make potential customers feel warm and fuzzy without actually showing anything to potentially discourage them (other than if the last 100 were :( complaints)).
- tptacek 16y agoI don't understand this observation. The alternative would be to show, what, a paginated array of every face? Who would benefit from that, besides people who want to snipe at them anonymously on message boards? Incidentally, in real companies, all transparency is selective. They've selected not to be transparent about any number of things, from their monthly top-line revenue to their feature roadmap.
- jasonfried 16y agoFor the record, it's not a subtle dig at getsatisfaction. "Customer satisfaction" has been a term used by the companies for decades. We don't think satisfaction is a very high bar. We're fighting against low expectations.
- alexophile 16y agoDo you publish response rates? Things like this always scream selection bias to me. If it were, say 90/7/3, but it took 300 interactions to get 100 responses, that seems like a misrepresentation. That being said - I really appreciate the idea, but it only really works if you trust the company already. I have plenty of reason to believe 37s (even applied to be a part of the team being tracked,) but if this were State Farm or Comcast or something like that, it would be a pretty laughable concept.
- jasonfried 16y agoI believe around 15% of our customers respond with a rating. From what I understand that's pretty high as far as these sorts of things go. I think that would be considered a reasonable sample. We don't ask randomly, we ask everyone, so everyone is free to offer up a rating. CORRECTION: Just reviewed the stats again and it looks like the response rate is in the mid 30s.
- joelrunyon 16y agoHow long till people start gaming this & submitting bad customer support tickets, just to spite them?
- brianpan 16y agoI don't see the point of getting a frowny face on a website for fun. But the point is, if you're not happy then putting a frown is exactly what you should do to let them know you weren't happy. Out of spite or whatever other reason, the point of customer support is trying to make those people happy customers.
- sammcd 16y agoFrom what i can tell it looks like the satisfaction rate has declined since this went live. I wonder if the fact that this is public info has changed the responses some how.