Customers Can Be Difficult, Deal With It

There are certain aspects of human nature that at times we find unseemly, what passes as unseemly depends upon your viewpoint at the time but customers can have unreasonable demands and expectations, they can blame you for things that aren’t your fault, they can swear at you, be obnoxious and refuse to listen to you. Bad experiences make people more vocal, I read somewhere that people remember bad experiences for over twenty years, whereas good experiences have less shelf life, your mileage may vary but being annoyed makes us more vocal, that’s human nature.

Recently Botgirl Questi posted a blog on why Botgirl thinks Linden Lab are investing in new products rather than Second Life. Interesting post, which received a response in the form of a blog post from Metareality Podcast superstar and owner of Sand Castle Studios Gianna Borgnine, in a post entitled: The Virtual World False Dilemna. Healthy disagreement and that is to be welcomed. However it’s in the comments of Gianna’s post that we see the human nature aspect rear its head, in a comment from someone calling themself “Another Ex Linden“:

“Would you keep talking to the public if it didn’t help your job? What if it caused personal attacks against you or something you care about? Most individual Lindens gave up years ago.

Would you let your employees talk to the public when conversations incite defamation of your company? A year ago the company issued a policy that stops most remaining Lindens from talking. Only a couple senior engineers speak publicly without PR training and scripts.

By the time I left, many Lindens moved their meetings to Skype and only logged into development servers. They added a viewer setting that ignores IMs from strangers. Assholes were always the loudest and almost nobody called them on it, so the users lost their collective voice.

This blog is years too late. Take these lessons to the next company that tries openness.”

Whether the person posting is an ex Linden only the person posting knows, but this comment applies to far more areas than the person who posted seems to realise.

The comment would of course not be made officially by a Linden, it’s a big customer service faux pas, but it is a natural response to those who are deemed to do nothing but criticise a company, this could be any company to be honest, not just Linden Lab. When we’re on the receiving end of an ear bashing, and I’ve had them verbally on the phone, via email and face to face, we get annoyed, especially when the person giving you the ear bashing is miles wide of the mark. However, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t listen to their points. The temptation to treat people who criticise you a lot as if they are the little boy who cried wolf is a natural reaction, but it’s one that should be avoided.

The assholes can be amongst your most staunch defenders in other situations, they can promote your brand, generally for someone to get to the stage of being a consistent critic it means they are engaged with you, you have them in your hand, people whom you completely lose may tell others how bad a service they received, but they generally stop telling you because they’ve moved on.

If you take a look at other forums, you’ll see plenty of complaints, you’ll see them in the World of Warcraft Forums, you’ll see them in the Star Wars: The Old Republic Forums, you’ll see them in ebay Forums and if you want to see real vitriol go and look at some politics blogs. Liberal Democrat President Tim Farronon had an article posted on The Guardian last night that had to have the comments closed in less than an hour as people told him in no uncertain terms what they thought of his brand, the moderators wanted to go to bed I assume, they’d have been busy had the comments been left open all night, they opened comments again when the moderators came back on duty.

Which reminds me, another Guardian article about the Lib Dems produced (for me anyway) an amusing typo where someone gets the Lib Dems mixed up with the Lindens:

“YouGov have the lindens at 8%, after the lindens betrayal of everything they said before the elections this 8% will seem like an high point to them.”

Fortunately for us, The Lindens are far more reputable and trustworthy than The Lib Dems! However back to the point, customers can be annoying but you need to deal with it and really, the worst thing you can do is flag someone as a whiner and ignore them forever, no matter how much vitriol they type your way, they may have a point and all points should be considered.

Yes it is frustrating and yes in private you will consider people to be annoying twerps with unrealistic demands, it’s perfectly natural, but a person’s frustrations with the company are perfectly natural too.

Back in September 2009 Eric Ries posted an article on the cardinal sin of community management, I thought it was a very good article back then and I still think it’s a very good article today, it’s an article that people should read as it touches on the relationships between a company and their community, because in virtual worlds like Second Life or IMVU, we are their community.

You can’t possibly please everyone all of the time and you may not want to deal with certain people at all, but as a business you have to deal with people in the right manner, I’ve generally never had a bad experience with a Linden directly, I’m sure I’ve annoyed plenty of them over the years, but they’ve always been professional in their responses, difficult customers are here to stay, rightly or wrongly, that’s the way the wheel spins.

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