3 ms·
Rating and social media systems give the strongest voice to your worst customers. I run a few SaaS apps and by far the majority of my time spent in support is
by throwaway13337 6y ago
Rating and social media systems give the strongest voice to your worst customers.
I run a few SaaS apps and by far the majority of my time spent in support is dealing with unreasonable customers. In the past, SaaS apps used to be able to ignore them but now they hold your company hostage with threat of bad reviews.
It's true that these systems could be used for good - letting other users know about issues with a product. In my experience, it's not how they're being used in practice. These people want special treatment and they get it - from me, and from everyone else.
It's really not fair to my other customers. I'd love to refund these unreasonable people entirely and send them on their way. I don't want their business. But the damage is just too great for refusal of service. One 1-star review is as powerful as ten 5-star reviews.
I'd like to see a rating and social media system that tracks the average rating of these customers across platforms. I'm sure it's overall negative for those on the attack.
These often verbally abusive, entitled customers are a real problem. They increase the cost for those not willing to be as pushy/loud/abusive. Giving them an even stronger voice is not a step forward.
- toomuchtodo 6y ago> I'd like to see a rating and social media system that tracks the average rating of these customers across platforms. How much would you pay for such an analytics and customer grading system?
- throwaway13337 6y agoSince refusing these customers would results in the same, nothing. But it would be nice that attached to that rating was a rating of the customer "this person gives an average of 1.5 stars" on the platform. And maybe weigh that rating as such.
- dewiz 6y agodid you consider using a public support forum to promote transparency? your helping customers would be visible, and unreasonable asks would be there too, for everyone to see if you did your best
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y agoI wish Amazon had forums instead of their awful review system. They'd have a Facebook level moderation problem but customers would be served better. Good companies with good products would also benefit.
- mchusma 6y agoI will second this comment. Angry customers not having a voice is effectively a non-issue in the world. Engineering time would be best spent on solving real world problems.
- tonyhb 6y agoYep. Had an ex-customer explicitly tell us he and his partner don't pay for anything. $8k later, we refunded them both because of an entirely unfounded rant and 1* reviews. They get away with it. Seconded on a system that tracks reviewers. You explicitly need to track their first review and their updated review - these people often update from a 1* to a 5* after a refund. Let us know: - Their average first rating - Their average total rating - How often a user changes from a 1* to a 5* / upgrades their review. This will point out abusers.
- the__alchemist 6y agoI'm curious about your idea about avg rating: It would be nice if rating systems weighed a person's star rating against their avg rating. So, 3 stars meant "avg compared to his normal reviews". (Or just a note with the person's avg rating) Although this could be abused as well by a user putting high reviews on fake etc companies, causing the 1-star reviews to hurt even more.
- worldmerge 6y agoIs it possible to give the customer a public score card? Like state that they were wanting special treatment, or were verbally abusive and give logs of their interactions?