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Comment by tlb | Hacker News Reader

Have you been in a chain grocery store and seen a store executive in suit discussing shelf placement with a supplier? They'll always take time to say hello to customers and be super-helpful and friendly. That's how good customer service attitude is propagated down from the top. When the boss disrespects customers in front of his team, that sets the upper limit for how well customers will be treated by the company.

As a CEO, if a customer can't be satisfied with your current offerings, you should sympathize with their frustration and wish them the best. And thank them for caring enough to try your service at all.

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> When the boss disrespects customers in front of his team, that sets the upper limit for how well customers will be treated by the company.

A single incident sets the upper limit? We don't know what kind of example he sets on a day-to-day basis. Customer service is a mentally taxing job. If I'm the person on the front line, I'm thinking, "at least the boss understands and has my back" rather than feeling defeated. Some customers are just bad customers; sure, try to understand and sympathize but there comes a point to tell them to "fuck off" (in the appropriate customer-service language).

The only thing wrong here is that it leaked out to the customer.

So, how does this square with the "fire your customers" dictum that seems to be pretty common in SV?

You fire them by telling them you unfortunately can't meet their needs at this time, not by telling them to F off.

Right. But "tell them to fuck off" is just an emotionally-charged, internal shorthand for "their demands are unreasonable, so using the normal niceties let them know we can't provide what's been requested".

Anyone so literal-minded to think such hyperbole is a actual request to tell a customer to "fuck off" is not qualified to be either a CEO or a Customer Support Representative.

True, but a CEO should know not to send anything in poor taste in email at all. Stuff like this can happen, and not always by accident.

CEOs are people with frustrations and lapses too.

And some high-functioning teams use extremely ribald language internally. Composing every internal message to a "what if this become public?" standard is the safest policy, but imposes such costs on clarity/motivation/speed that it might not be the optimal policy.

Using "ribald language internally" might be ok until you get into your first lawsuit with discovery. It does tend to rub a jury a bit wrong.

You could always try both: "Unfortunately, we cannot meet your needs at this time, so F off."

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