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I think everyone agrees - never say anything nasty to any potential customer, but if you do this mistake, at least don't do that publicly on a social network or
by eranation 14y ago
I think everyone agrees - never say anything nasty to any potential customer, but if you do this mistake, at least don't do that publicly on a social network or anything that can be recorded.
On the other hand, there is no such thing as bad publicity, maybe it's their weird way to get recognition, by treating their customers like they owe them something.
After all I'm sure most of the readers will go to their website, just to see what it is, and even try their service.
So in the end, the bad customer service led to a blog post by the customer that was being badly treated, which might give them more traffic than if they were just nice, ironic.
- rscale 14y agoThey're not in a position of power. They're offering a commodity service, and they're positioning themselves as "the option with poor customer service." I don't think that's going to attract much in the way of customers, or investment. I don't wish them ill; but they really need to stop digging, and they haven't figured that out yet.
- jessaustin 14y agoI'm not disagreeing with you, but I'm curious: if this is a "commodity service", what competitors of BP would you recommend? I don't mean just some consultant: where can I go where the process will be similar, in that I don't have to talk to anyone and I don't have to hire anyone but I just have to enter my particulars and pay for what I want?
- simonw 14y agoUser Testing was mentioned in the OP http://usertesting.com/ http://usertesting.com/
- rscale 14y agoThis list may contain errors, but UsabilitySciences, BugPub, Testlio, UserTesting, UserZoom, RemoteResearch, and uTest all look to offer related value propositions. Craigslist, CrowdFlower, ClickWorker, CloudCrowd, Reddit's /r/forhire and Amazon's Mechanical Turk can probably be used similarly. When I've done UX testing, I've gone out, located the real target market of the specific product we were testing, and tested in-person. A couple times this process included a Craigslist post, but generally it was fully in-person. As such, I'm not qualified to recommend a specific service.
- nestlequ1k 14y agoWho knows, you might be right about it being a "designed controversy". I expect an apology post to be top on hacker news in the next few hours. In the crowded market of user testing, just getting people know you exist for any reason (either liking you or hating you) is a winning formula.