Notes

Exactly why Do Some Technical Companies Seem to be able to Hate Their Customers?

Last year, after one of Facebook's main UI changes that customarily ignited a volcano connected with tantrums from users who liked it how it was, Mark Zuckerberg allegedly sent round a memo to Facebook employees stating that:


"The most disruptive organizations don't listen to their customers"


Whether this memo ended up being real or not, it outlined a point about Silicon Valley's attitude towards its users which has only become more entrenched after that. A couple of years ago I attempted to communicate with Facebook's advertising staff about an ad that were disapproved, and despite numerous tries never got a response, at all. Not even an auto-response.

I had similar experiences using Google and Twitter, the best (! ) being an show w here some Russian company had wholeheartedly and unashamedly copied my Google advertising text word-for-word and wager slightly higher to feature above me for the same search engine terms. I contacted Google to help complain. Their eventual answer? "Sorry, nothing we can do".


Speaking to other business owners, I have learned that this is a fairly common experience, and the smaller that you are the more pronounced the problem. It feels like the big tech corporations simply don't give a darn about you unless you're a major spender. What's going on?


The numbers don't lie

I decided to look into this, to see if there is any substance behind these kind of anecdotal assumptions.


There is a website called Customer Service Scoreboard that will tracks customer feedback on key brands and ranks these individuals according to how many positive along with negative reviews they obtain. Companies get a score out of 200 based and a general rating along a range from Terrible to Great. Here's how some of the greatest tech companies are rated currently (I will call this kind of set of companies Group A):


Facebook: Terrible (16. eight out of 200)

Twitter: Awful (19. 6 out of 200)

Google: Terrible (22. 29 out of 200)

LinkedIn: Awful (22. 29 out of 200)

Uber: Terrible (23. 03 out of 200)

Ouch. Damning evidence on the surface. But let's take a not get too captivated just yet; we all know that people are usually far more likely to leave a review in the first place if they have something adverse to say (this is called verbal doubts bias), so one would count on most companies to have a generally greater proportion of negative evaluations. What's interesting, therefore , is to compare these companies to the highest-ranking (or should I say fewer negatively ranking) tech firms on the same platform (Group B):


Microsoft: Disappointing (31. 69 out of 200)

Apple: Unsatisfactory (47. 37 out of 200)

Netflix: Acceptable (73. 08 out of 200)

Asus: Appropriate (74. 36 out of 200)

Amazon: Acceptable (80. twenty four out of 200)

This is of course a very unscientific assessment, but it does show a certain structure. On closer examination there is a general difference between the a pair of groups of companies: who the consumer is.


For Group C, the setup is pretty simple. They have products and they sell to the customer in a very strong way, be it via a actual physical store or an online internet commerce system. Their revenues usually are directly tied to the number of those who use their service; the greater users they get, cardiovascular disease sales they get. Easy.


For Group A but the millions of people who utilize these services are not the customers can use at all. The services themselves aren't even the product. No, the merchandise is the data that individuals millions of users generate, which can be packaged up and sold to the real customers: the promoters, salespeople, recruiters and other middlemen who want access to it. For the companies, user numbers are usually more comparable with television people in that the higher the statistics, the more they can make inside advertising revenue. Charging you directly - as is the situation with cable TV - is definitely optional.


Here's where this gets complicated though.


In the world of television, there is a very clear divide between the viewer, the supplier and the advertiser. The audience is the average Joe or Linda who consumes the content, typically for free; the supplier could be the content maker, for example the creation house that makes television series, plus the advertiser is normally a marketing organization that has a direct relationship using the television company.


Barriers to help entry along this chain are incrementally higher typically the further up you go. Becoming a viewer is pretty easy, creating a TV show or series is more expensive and skilled, and being an advertiser requires buckets of money depending on how many audiences the television company has. The tv screen company makes all the decisions on what content is program and what advertisers are used. In the world of modern tech companies, however , there are no barriers for you to entry for either customers, content makers or promoters. Anybody can be any of these.


Get social media for instance. Access to Facebook, Twitter et al is open to anybody and everyone with some kind of internet connection, as well as use of the platforms is no cost. Much like television, in that feeling. Unlike television, however , most of the content on social media is usually produced by the users, without curation. This allows for the mass systems of content at scale (the billions of posts publicized on social media are the fishing hook for users), with the human being management cost reduced to be able to policing complaints about content rather than approving every bit of written content (which would not only spark a fatal delay in libéralité for the users posting, but would also require a good insanely large editorial team). When you have almost two thousand users - like Facebook - this is pretty much the only feasible way of handling the quantity, but it does mean compromising customer service for all but the most serious complaints.


The customer is definitely expensive

One could argue that this can be fair enough given that these websites are free for users; is actually hard to justify spending money on customer care for users who is just not make you revenue. Right?


Properly, the first argument against that is that users are the explanation advertisers spend money on the tools, so generally speaking you should be incentivised not to piss them away from too much or the value of your own personal platform could plummet if users abandon ship. Nevertheless we are dealing with somewhat unparalleled numbers on these programs so I feel the approach, being, is probably the correct one. Where it gets sticky, however, is the fact that any standard consumer can make use of the automated advertising tools to become an marketer. This is a fantastic innovation which includes benefited many small businesses along with entrepreneurs, particularly in the early days when competition was still mild, but it does present a dilemma for the platform: anyone can also be a potential revenue-generating client, but which ones will make in which shift and how much will they spend?


These are the sort of data points you need to correctly plan a customer service function, and no matter how advanced your platform, this will regularly be a hard one to predict in the event you own a social media site. A user could spend anywhere from £0. 50 to several thousand kilos at a time, making it tricky for you to consistently allocate customer service cost.


And so, most of these companies use a couple of tactics to reduce customer support cost. The first is to preset as much as possible by building comprehensive FAQs and knowledge bases that they refer people to for replies, rather than taking up a customer support rep's time. The second is to make it really quite tricky to submit a complaint, which is achieved by presenting the user having a series of gatekeeper questions, not necessarily providing phone numbers or primary email addresses, and just commonly making it as non-straightforward as you can to get in touch.


But actually then, if you do get through with a customer service rep, you get handled like a nuisance - or merely plain ignored - if you are a big spender. When i understand the probable mechanics of why that happens, it doesn't allow it to become okay. Social media advertising is often a $31billion industry, there should be ample cash floating around to invest in indiscriminate customer support. Same applies for your other tech companies guilty of this behaviour.

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