> I run a service where you pay once for a lifetime upgrade, and it doesn't make much money so I don't care very much about dissatisfying bad customers.
I don't like this attitude.
I don't like this attitude.
I guess most people here in HN never worked in customer support, or as cashier and such.
Treat people with respect. Customer support already mentally tax people, much more that you would expect if you never worked in it.
I have a customer facing job and I work closely with the customer service department so I'm exposed to a lot of this (I meet customers face to face as well), and it's shocking how rude and abusive some people can get to another human being.
I tell people all the time to stuff their attitude up their holes and start over if they want any help from me. I'm a human being; I will not accept people talking like that to me.
Those customers sure wouldn't accept it if I acted like that to them, why should the reverse be okay?
I don't see that it's reasonable to disregard the issues of a paying customer on account of their poor netiquette. They aren't a professional tester filing a bug-report, they're a paying customer with poor communication skills. I don't see that refusing to help them, and even mocking them, is an acceptable response. At the very least you're holding yourself to a low standard.
Paying gets you support, it doesn't get you the right to be rude to the person you're asking for help.
What would you have done?
My takeaway from the reactions in this thread is that businesses are culturally expected to let the customer walk all over them, and anything other than "thank you for your abuse, now please let me help you" is considered rude.
Yes, their tone is rude, but it's not as if it's outright abusive. One can't be so thin-skinned as to take offence at punctuation. They also failed to provide any details about the problem, but that's what happens when you deal with customers rather than professional testers. The ability to file good bug-reports (or support requests) is a skill; you can't very well insist that all your customers must have it.
I sincerely don't understand how that's controversial at all. If someone on the street saw you and said "Hey! You! Help me cross the street NOW!!!" would you feel obligated to help them? Would it be rude to say "you can't talk to me like that"?
> I sincerely don't understand how that's controversial at all
There are gradations. If the customer were being truly offensive, that would be one thing, but in this case they're really just making themselves look like a petulant teenager.
I'd have rolled my eyes and got to work, knowing they'll probably behave better (and regret their silly outburst) once they know I'm taking them seriously.
If an employee sent a message with this level of rudeness, then sure, you'd want to have a word with them about their netiquette, but customers can't be held to the same standard.
This is where I think you're mistaken. Customers and clients like this, once they see they've gotten you under their thumb, will be more than happy to continue exploiting you.
Remember Stavros was charging a small lifetime fee. Clients from hell will twist this and try to make you their personal developer for as long as possible.
You seem to think that Stav should be thankful for the opportunity to fix the particular bug, but who's to say he wouldn't have discovered and fixed it on his own time?
Customers can and should be held to the same standard. Otherwise you end up with shit customers.
I'm not saying you're obligated to be a total pushover. You're certainly not obligated to agree to every feature-request, or even to every bug-fix request. I still don't think the way they handled the support request (such as it was) was appropriate.
> Stavros was charging a small lifetime fee. Clients from hell will twist this and try to make you their personal developer for as long as possible.
We don't have reason to believe this is what's happened here. I figure the customer was probably just frustrated and, yes, rather rude.
If you make the decision to sell a lifetime service, you take on some level of lifetime support obligation.
> You seem to think that Stav should be thankful for the opportunity to fix the particular bug, but who's to say he wouldn't have discovered and fixed it on his own time?
If handling their issue properly results in uncovering a bug, that's a good thing. I don't think it's of much consequence if you feel thankful.
The customer was still rude, sure. Does that outweigh the benefit of discovering a bug? I don't think it matters. The question is about offering good service and handling rude customers.
> Customers can and should be held to the same standard. Otherwise you end up with shit customers.
But you've already chosen to take their money in exchange for a lifetime service. It's not the same as declining to renew a contract.
If the customer is being outright abusive, that's reasonable grounds to decline to take on their support request. I'd draw the line somewhere above this sort of low-level rudeness though.
Also if you have them on a tiny service it's likely an indication of poor user experience: poor user interfaces, poor performance, poor documentation, poor reliability, etc.
Really? You don't think so? I begin my emails with "hello" and end with "thank you", which I have been taught is polite. What would be rude to you?
When I'm frustrated I try to collect myself and be mannered. It's not an excuse. Communicating properly not only makes everyone lives better but also allows better understanding. It's more efficient.
So I'm using a car sharing system. The car is great. The app is a weird, slow, HTML-ish thingy that appears to trigger bluetooth bugs and frequently loses state.
So I drive my family to a friend. My partner will then continue the trip with our kid. What you need to do, is get out, lock the car, and close the reservation. Then my partner can create a new reservation, and continue driving.
We're already late. It's hot outside. Kid is crying. I open the app, lock the car, and close the reservation. App fails with vague error. My partner is standing there, kid and phone in arm, asking "c'mon hurry".
I call the support line, and give him the problem. The support guy asks me to go through a series of steps. Then I flip and scream: "DAMNIT I'm sick and tired of this app failing me, it's never simply a painless process and now I'm standing here in the heat with a crying kid".
He laughs and says: "I understand but I'm trying to help you, sir. How about you let me talk to the partner?"
To this day, I'm both ashamed, amazed and happy how professional this guy was.