Commercial software companies across the industry have an often well-deserved reputation for poor customer service. Unfortunately, companies that sell Open Source Software are well on the way to establishing a reputation for being even worse than commercial firms. I believe I know why. The reason has its’ roots in the origin of the free software movement, and in the cultural bias of the geek world. Here is my take on the subject, for whatever it might be worth.
Editorial Notice: All opinions are those of the author and not necessarily those of osnews.com
The root of the problem is based on the fact that OSS companies are not marketing a product, they are marketing services. Many firms seem to have trouble coming to grips with this fact. A commercial software company like Microsoft, or Novell, or any other company that produces and sells a proprietary software package is actually selling a combination of product and service, wrapped in one bundle. OSS companies are selling service, period.
Unfortunately, the operators of OSS companies tend to be refugees from the commercial software world, and they are conditioned and programmed to think in terms of proprietary code. Even when the company officers at various Linux distros consciously recognize that OSS is not proprietary, their conditioned reflexes still get the better of them. They can’t help it, they were raised that way. It is the only paradigm that they understand.
A company which sells a particular flavor of Linux is not selling a product. You can’t sell what you don’t own. So the Linux distributors resort to rather plaintive attempts to take free software and make it semi-proprietary, all without quite violating the letter of the GPL. Sorry, but taking someone else’s work and tweaking the
graphics a little, perhaps adding a new installer and/or a new control panel,
and then stamping your company logo on it does not turn it into your private
property.
The “product” is free for anyone who cares to look. The
only thing that an OSS company has to offer that is worth paying for is
convenience. Pointing a newbie to the user forums for answers is acceptable if
you are talking about software that is freely downloadable. But pointing a
CUSTOMER to the forums, after they have given you money in return for the
expectation of technical support, is not acceptable.
Customer service is
it. This is all you have to offer. If your customer service is poor, then it
doesn’t matter how good your graphics, or your installer, or your control panel
might be. Because the OSS community is constantly working to improve the product
and if the free community hasn’t already released a free version that is as good
or better than yours, you can rest assured that they soon will.
Microsoft is desperately trying to come to grips with the simple fact
that you can’t compete with free. And you can’t. The only way you can compete
sucessfully is to build customer loyalty. And you don’t build customer loyalty
by making an especially well-tweaked version of someone else’s work. You build
customer loyalty by making your customers feel special, by convincing them that
they truly matter to you. And that is the only possible way to do it.
As
someone who has spent dreary years working with and for the public, I can say
that there are some basic principles that every person who works in customer
service has to keep in the forefront of their mind. These basics are not
optional. You must follow these if you want to survive. Prospering is
another story, I am talking about keeping a company from going under. And a sad
number of Linux companies appear to never have heard of these.
Principle #1: The customer is always right, even when they
are wrong and acting like an a**hole about it. No matter what, they are still
the customer and without them you don’t have an income. If they are livid, just
make soothing noises and pat them on the head until they calm down. But never,
ever, under any circumstances let them get under your skin. And
never allow yourself to react to anger with more anger in return.
No matter what the provocation.
The difficulty with this one is that
geeks are not good with people. It’s a Catch-22 situation. The very qualities
that make a person good with numbers and programming tend to interfere with
people skills. It is a rare individual indeed who can handle both well. Most
Open Source Software companies tend to be relatively small, ranging from a small
handful of developers up to a medium size basketful of developers. Very few OSS
companies can afford to employ dedicated public relations personnel. Usually,
when you manage to contact customer service (if you manage to contact customer
service at all) you end up talking to a programmer. This means that your main
contact with the company will be someone who is not superb at confrontation.
Most geeks react to anger with more anger. Once tempers rise, customer care goes
out the window.
I will offer a real world example of what I mean – I
tried to contact a Linux company last year with a networking question. To avoid
causing unnecessary friction, I will call this company “M****ake”. I had been
having some issues with network hardware that was supposed to have been
supported out of the box, and I repeatedly sent emails to customer support
requesting advice . It took me four repeated attempts to finally get a response
from someone, which did not help my temper any.
Finally I was contact by
email with the suggestion that I should ask someone on the user forums about my
problem. I responded that I had already checked the user forums, and moreover I
had not purchased the software from anyone on the forums. I had purchased the
software from “M****ake” and I thought “M****ake” should take responsibility for
helping me with the installation support that they had promised. I made mention
that I had in fact purchased two separate boxed copies of their software. The
customer support representative replied, and I quote, “That’s nice. Thats why
I bothered to answer you in the first place” . I haven’t purchased
“M****ake” since. Nor do I intend to.
Principle #2: Always
follow through on every customer complaint, no matter how trivial. This will
mean spending a large amount of time on what feels like a foolish waste of
energy, but you can’t escape it. The worst result that you can achieve, the very
worst thing you can do to your company’s reputation, is to convince the
customers that you don’t give a care. Even if it is silly, keep on top of it
until the customer goes away satisfied.
The thing to remember here
is that nobody feels unimportant to themselves. There is no such thing as a
trivial problem when it is your problem. I can’t count the times I
have read complaints about a particular Linux distro not supporting someone’s
sound card, or their video card, or printer, or some other thing. The (dreadful)
response that I most commonly see is ‘replace your (whatever) with one that is
supported’.
Herein lies the difficulty. What if they can’t? What if the
customer lives in an area where computer upgrades are difficult to obtain? Many
people live in the country, miles from the nearest electronic store. Even more
likely, what if they can’t afford it? Fact is, computers are costly little
devils, even now when the prices are dropping. And for many people it is not a
trivial matter to drop a couple of hundred dollars on a new video card, or even
$50 on a new sound card. When your customer has a problem, no matter how
piddling you personally might consider it to be, remember that they are probably
operating under a different set of circumstances than you are. And quite likely,
they have fewer options available to fix things than you do. So do your best to
come up with a solution that they can use, not necessarily the one that you
would have chosen for yourself.
Another real world example here – I
recently acquired a copy of a (supposedly) newbie friendly Linux distro I will
refer to as “L****ws”. The version I got was release 3.0, and this particular
company had just released a new update to version 4.0. Not to worry, I was
assured that the license fee included the right to a free upgrade from the
“L****ws” servers. So I logged onto the “L****ws” web site and registered my new
distro. I then happily and innocently connected to the company ftp server and
began downloading. But then the fact that I am on a dialup connection reared
its’ ugly head, and I had to break the connection for an important phone call. I
wasn’t expecting any trouble, since I was using a download manager that
supported resuming.
Unfortunately, I had reckoned without the
institutional paranoia that is one of the hallmarks of “L****ws”. When I tried
to reconnect I was told that the password was wrong. I went back to the web page
and reconnected, and found that neither the “L****ws” ftp server, nor their http
server, allowed resuming a disconnected download. Apparently there is a time
delay on the connection, and after a few seconds the server resets and you need
a new password. I submitted a query to the “L****ws” support page (which
promised in writing to have a response within 24 hours) and then started
checking the user forums on my own to see if anyone else had this problem.
I discovered a fairly long thread in the user forums that showed not
only was this a known problem, but that multiple people have been complaining
about it for some time. A “L****ws” forum moderator had dropped into the thread
and said that customers had basically two options: 1) Get broadband, or 2) order
the CD-ROMs from the company. Since the full set of CD-ROMs for the upgrade
would equal the total price I had paid for the original package, I decided not
to go with that idea. And I do not have the option of broadband available at
this time. The “L****ws” moderator responded by airly declaring that price was
irrelevant, once you had tried broadband you would never go back to dialup.
Well, this might be true. But if you don’t use the internet for anything besides
web surfing, chat and email then broadband is an unecessary expense. And in my
case, I simply can’t get it. Physically impossible.
Did I mention that
the “L****ws” support page offered written assurances stating that all requests
fro assistance from registered customers who were logged in would be answered
within 24 hours? On day number six (6) I finally got a rather brief, very polite
response that “L*****ws” could not help me with the problem and suggested that I
check the user forums. Three days later I went back to check the status of my
support ticket and saw that it had been marked as “Solved”. If the problem got
solved, nobody told me about it.
However, not to worry. There are
several Warez sites out there…….
Principle #3: If one
(1) person complains about something, you can be sure that ten (10) more are
unhappy but haven’t bothered to tell you. If five (5) people complain, you can
be pretty sure that one hundred (100) customers are either quietly upset, or you
have already lost their business without realizing it. Every complaint matters.
If one customer has a problem, there is no possible way that you can escape the
certainty that other people have the same or a similar problem.
With
rare exceptions, computer related problems are not unique. Whether it be
hardware, or operating system, or applications, or peripherals, if one person
has a problem someone else also has the same problem. Even if it is user error.
The trouble is, many people are reluctant to make waves. Either they don’t think
that the problem can be fixed and they see no reason to put themselves to the
trouble, or they simply give up right away and try something else. Most casual
end users will not sit and hammer away at a recalcitrant piece of code or
hardware. They will snarl and toss it into the trash.
When this happens
you end up with diminishing user base, and a dropping rate of repeat business.
All without knowing why. This is where monitoring your customer service records
becomes critical. If a complaint comes in, pay attention no matter what
it is. User errors are common. But many users make the same errors so maybe you
should adjust the interface, or update the manual. No matter what the complaint,
you can be certain that if one person has a problem with something then there
are others who don’t think it is worth the pain to complain. If you forget this,
you can be left dangling with dropping profit margins and a bad reputation, all
without ever knowing why.
You may never get to see beyond the tip of the
iceberg. But the iceberg is always there, believe it.
Principle #4: This is the hardest one sometimes. You have
to realize, and internalize, the fact that the customer does not owe you
anything at all. Not even courtesy. They paid your company money in
return for something. Either they bought a product, or they hired a service. If
they believe that they (the customer) did not receive good value for their
money, then it is your responsibility to make it right. No matter what it takes.
This is hard to keep in mind while you are being cussed at by some fool, but in
all justice if they paid money and did not get what they paid for, then
THEY are the ones who got screwed. If you (meaning your company)
took their money then it is your responsibility to see that they get good value.
Even when you want to strangle them and dump the body in some vacant lot. They
are the injured party, not you.
IT people have an attitude. No sense
in denying it, the average geek is smart and well aware of that fact. The
average geek is good at what they do and well aware of that fact also. And the
average geek is very protective of “their” handiwork. Most programmers I have
known act like you have attacked their firstborn when you make a remark critical
of their code.
Fine, be proud of your work. But recognize that other
people’s money is just as important to them as your money is to you. Complaining
about your work is not the same thing as making a personal attack on your flesh
and blood. It may feel that way, but it is not. Remember that the customer does
not know you or care to know you. All they know is that somehow their money is
gone and they still don’t have what they expected.
Maybe their
expectations were unreasonable. So what? Maybe they just don’t understand
something. So what? They are the ones who parted with money. They are the ones
who need to be placated. Once you take their money, the responsibilty for making
sure that good value is returned cannot be escaped. A refund is the last resort.
A refund says that you cannot, or will not fix the problem and you are giving
up. This will percolate through the customers friends and family, and soon you
have a small crowd of peopel who are convinced that you are substandard.
It isn’t actually necessary to win this fight. All you have to do is to
convince, and make the customer truly believe, that you are honestly trying to
do your best for them. People will forgive much if they are sure that you are
acting in good faith. Many times when people are complaining they don’t really
expect the problem to be fixed. They just feel impelled to vent. If you can fix
the problem, then great. That is a bonus. But the one thing you absolutely must
do, the one critical thing that you must do, is convince the
customer that they are important to you, they matter to you, and you are going
to go to the absolute limit to do your very best for them.
If you can
accomlpish that, you have a loyal customer. If you can’t accomplish that, kiss
your paycheck goodbye.
The article is okay, but lacks any basis in fact. They depend entirely on the personal experiences of one person. If we assume that his situation is representative (big if) then he makes some good points.
However, I think there is a far simpler explanation for why his support experience was as bad as it was. First, everyone’s support sucks, so let’s not start with overly high hopes. Second, and more importantly, most of the companies he mentions are tiny companies with little infrastructure. Home-user desktop Linux (which is what Mandrake and Lindows represent) is simply not a big business. There’s no money to be made there, at least not yet. So I’m not at all surprised that the only companies in the market are rinky-dink operations with poor support.
Now, I’m guessing the situation is very different at the high-end. People are actually making money on enterprise Linux (both on the desktop and on the server), so support is probably a whole lot better. I’d be far more interested to see if anybody has serious complaints against the support departments at RedHat or SuSE/Novell.
that goes against the trend for customer support. it usually is phenomenal when the company is small and as it gets larger, the service suffers.
Not necessarily. Mandrake and Lindows are small and primarily focused on engineering. That leaves very few resources for support. Your observation might be true for certain types of companies (that provide purely a service, rather than a product + a service, as Mandrake and Lindows do) but it probably isn’t true for many other types of companies. Certainly, I’ve encountered many small software companies with spotty support. At least the larger companies have uniformly mediocre support.
Your ad hominem argumentation points to your own immaturity rather than the author’s. In any case, your own post isn’t very well proofread–spelling and grammatical mistakes abound.
You misunderstand the purpose of the asterisks. The intention is to make a generalization, but give enough clues to the reader that s/he realizes what in particular the author is talking about. ‘A**hole’ is customary to avoid offending those easily offended. What exactly is the problem with the word ‘warez’? It refers to a phenomenon fairly widespread in the online world, and one that has become a part of the Internet linguafranca.
Please don’t dig at the editors here. It’s passe and pointless. If you have a problem, email [email protected] .
i’m taking a break right now from writing up my recommendation for a new distro to replace red hat (deep-sixing their standard distro means they got to go) – i’m really tempted to recommend gentoo, but the sad fact of the matter is that, although we’ll probably never buy a support package, we need the *option* of having quality vendor support – if for no other reason than to show the investors that we’re not a bunch of diy-hippies (although we are… don’t tell anybody)
Indeed, some of the point are valid. However going to any length to find a cure seems a bit far fetched. If your hardware isnt supported should they write linus (no)? However, any person (customer service person) that is told to go out and buy new hardware should be fired.
Customer Service should find some sort of alternatives for the customer but going hog wild isnt always possible/profitable (IMHO).
PS: I dont bother with customer service. I learn to fix things on my own. And yes, i know that the general public needs some sort of support. Placating seems to be a forgotten art. And it does do wonders.
Yes, he should have known his upgrade would be ftp, but then again, Lindows should have had the possibility of download resume or at the least, a reusable password or a replacement password. Also reasonably priced CD’s would be a good idea if you are entitled to a free downloadable upgrade.
I thought it was worded ok for an amature article. A**holes Inc. doesn’t sue you for publishing their name in a bad light while many companies do these days. It is also a common form of humor.
I think it is very important to point out how bad support from Mandrake was. Was it a cause or an effect of their poor finances?
I can say that I received great support from Lycoris, the only Linux I have paid for since RH 5.0.
IMHO, the author makes some very valid points. Thanks.
I agree that the author makes some good points. How they apply to any given circumstance is of course up to interpretation, but they are good advice to Open Source companies.
The big problem I see for Open Source companies is that they are trying to blend two highly incompatible things: modern business practices and idealistic (or at least political) geeks. Modern business generally speaking don’t understand what is needed to gain real support from the geek community. Geeks generally don’t understand what is needed to gain real support from the Joe User community. Some companies have been fairly successful in gaining geek support, but very few have achieved the latter. I don’t know or care what this may or may not imply about how adapatable geeks are, but I know that is a lesson that many Open Source companies would do well to learn.
The problem with almost all of the software industry is that it is run by geeks turned businessmen. I can’t imagine many of the IT entrepreneurs being anywhere near as successful in any other industry. The current breed of geek/entrepreneur will eventually forced out and replaced by hardnosed technocrats.
If it works for you use it. If it doesn’t then don’t. As for me and our company, we use it on all of our servers (72) and all of our admin workstations. We use the free downloadable edition of RedHat 7.2. No support from them. None needed. And yes, thanks to Google!
Lucky you! Unfortunately there are lots of people out there who need real another-person-on-the-end-of-the-line support.
Sure, as some people know, yes, I am an a-hole on this forum and others, however, when a customer comes to me and hands over that cash, I am 100% focused on them until their problem has been resolved. They’ve paid for a service and by crikey they want to see that the money they have shelled out has been well worth it.
Too many “geeks” would rather code than serve customers, thats very nice, then stick to it, however, if you are going to go into customer service, whether it be opensource or working at an ISP help desk, you are there to provide part of the “complete service”. If they ask a question outside what your support conditions specify then be polite, explain to the customer the situation and point to some reference points that may help them with the situations. An example of this would be a customer ringing up their ISP inquiring why their operating system hasn’t detected their sound card.
In defence of the customer support people, I have worked on a help desk and I eventually quit. Management hated the fact that I wanted to go the extra mile, if a person was using Linux, I would help them over the phone to setup the connection, if the person was using a Mac with an unsupported email client, I would try my best to help them.
If you want to blame someone, don’t blame the front line staff because all too often there is some PHB screaming because there are people like ME being TOO helpful to customers.
I second his experiences and comments!!!!!!!!!!!! If a information tech company wants to succed and thrive, Focus and Excel on Customer Services!!!!! 95% of the time a customer’s experience with your customer services will do 2 things, either Validate the customer’s decision to choose your product or services, or totally Invalidate the initial decision! The remaining 5% are circumstances beyond your control and/or the customer. Need an example? ask people who purchased computer systems from Dell, In retailing, ask people who shopped at Wal-Mart in the early years, in the travel industy, check out the 5 star hotels, they are very expensive, but, what fantastic customer service you received while staying at a hotel. Why do you think people return to a hotel after their first stay? Lastly, fantastic customer could be the only thing to distinguish your company from your competition!
The world of customer support has turned into searching a database for the resolution. Days of actually speaking to a human being are just about gone, since most companies are publicly traded on the stock exchange now. The stock holders want a return on their money, so the company has to slash jobs, most of the time the first to go are the ‘help desk’ employees. Thus, the company initiates automation hence, software or a database to solve user problems. Then company can make money by charging a fee for the problems unresolved by the automated or database software.
With Linux trying to make money off of a ‘service’ is very difficult unless you can sell hardware and the software. A service economy does not work without a manufacturing base; this is no different from the Linux companies who have gone bankrupt trying to do this. In the end, like the article states, the customer has the final say. I can understand the customers frustrations on this, after he/she has spent anywhere from $40-100+ on an operating system and it does not work on their system. What end value is it, more often than not it is wiped and Windows re-installed. One end note, if the software came with ‘e-mail’ support, how can they send email on a machine that is not functioning.
In the end, Linux will remain a ‘hobby operating system’. With everyone being so pressed for time nowadays, family, work etcetera it is becoming very clear no on wants to spend anymore time on a computer. If you work in IT all day long, with Unix/Linux/Windows Servers, this is the last thing on your mind at the end of the day.
I’ll happily make purchases from EJB Solutions ( http://www.ejbsolutions.com ) again. I bought the package of opensource development tools that they sell, and when it messed up on me, i got days of help from the lead engineer on the project.
Basically, the author is right. With paid support, or a purchased product, the experience should be like mine with EJB. And all too often, it is not. But at the same time, there’s a large portion of the Linux/OSS community who seem to fervently believe that they are entitled to the products of others’ labour. If you get it for free, expect little or no help.
1) The buck stops here support
2) and the somebody elses problem support
The difference is in the price you pay. The problem is that most consumers do not know that they are paying for the second option.
Most companies don’t intend their service to fit in the second categorie but due to lack of resources it ends up that way.
I agree with you 100%. I _do not_ give repeat business to companies that don’t give me the respect I deserve. Even though I am a geek at heart, I happily supported people who could not “turn on the email” or figure out where to plug in the phone line, etc as a side function of one of my old jobs. If you are in customer service, and you are rude, condescending, arrogant, WHATEVER – you are not doing your job. You deserve to be fired without severance, not given a recommendation, etc. And I will speak to your manager, and make sure that happens, or try to move to a competitor’s service.
I’m part of the IT staff maintaining a school division computer network and I have to answer daily to dozens of teachers and administrators who have computer woes.
Keeping track of all the little troubles, even just writing them down and placing them on the back-burner (and telling them so) helps making them happy. At least they know you just didn’t say “yeah, I’ll see what I can do” and never come back to them.
I’ve been told many times over that my services are greatly appreciated and they finally feel like someone cares. Sure helps in keeping my paycheck coming in.
This guy’s article contains a few tips that are applicable, even if not to their full extent, they are at the very least good guiding principles.
a.) never get angry at a customer
b.) give attention to details
c.) keep track of all problems and give proper regular feedback
After all, that you care or not for the customer doesn’t really matter, what matters is that they feel like you care ( but it does help if you really do care
)
At first I thought this article was going to be about a crybaby who got tired of hearing “RTFM”. Then, after reading it, I think I agree with him. He bought a product, and didn’t get the service that should have come with the purchase. TWICE.
Maybe what the Distros should do is contract out to one Tech Support company so they can just pay them and have less redundancy. Of course, the distros would have to be more similar.
On the other hand, maybe Linux is just too hard to support. The companies in the story, however, should have done better. I’d like to say we should be more scientific about this and poll more companies, but these two are 2 of the best known for the Desktop.
However, I don’t agree that Geek!=People.Skills. It may be a while before linux Tech support gets better. The bad news, some of these Distros will probably go out of business. The ones with better tech support/business model will survive. Sometimes change takes time.
First, let me say excellent read. Thanks. Been on that end of that stick and it can be difficult.
I think it worth mentioning that Lindows is trying to correct its support problems with a very interesting new strategy. You can now get unlimited any-time support for $59.95 a year if your are a click-and-run member (which costs $5/month i think) and $79.95 for non-members. I think this is reasonable for someone who really needs support. And should provide better service. Although it may make serves worse for those who don’t get it. But I hope it proves to be postive on the whole.
Secondly, concerneing your first paragraph. I have to say that you have a point, but companies are trying to sell it as a product. And that’s a fact. But I agree with you and in fact would go further. Linux should never be sold in-and-of-itself. Yes, cover package costs and support costs and perhaps a small margin on that, but beyond that the “real products” should be supporting content and services. Period.
LINUX OS itself should be like a game console. Dirt Cheap. But then good programs and support and custom programming and manuals and even frig’n T-shirts should be the profit makers. In this way all the Linux companies could work together to sell basically the same OS (100% compatable!) But then strive to profit on BRANDING and CONTENT SERVICES. You dig?
Anyhow, hope you find that of interest. Great work.
“Unfortunately, companies that sell Open Source Software are well on the way to establishing a reputation for being even worse than commercial firms.”
No arguments for premise stated.
“OSS companies are selling service, period.”
Period? Is that it? Well, i think it’s too black vs. white. Many do work on Free software too. Just check out the e-mails of @redhat.com on the LKML. What you say is simply untrue.
“and they are conditioned and programmed to think in terms of proprietary code.”
It’s actually the FSF who talk a lot about proprietary vs. commercial software. I think proprietary is the correct name. One can’t even ”own” Windows one can have a license to USE a copy of Windows. You don’t actually OWN it then, OWN a license. I believe the problem of this lies in the roots of materialism.
“A company which sells a particular flavor of Linux is not selling a product.”
According to my dictionary, a product is the result of work. Do you disagree people worked on a GNU/Linux distribution? Do you disagree the GNU/Linux distribution is not IN ANY WAY the result of THEIR work (too)? This is besides the point that the software is Free (as in speech).
“You can’t sell what you don’t own.”
Hehe, oh certainly one can. You want to buy a **3 CD from me for $2?
Oh well, seriously, i’d argue that either GPL software is owned by nobody, because anyone can do almost everything with it what s/he wants according to the license (simply said) and therefore it can said it’s owned by everone, or anybody who wants to.
“So the Linux distributors resort to rather plaintive attempts to take free software and make it semi-proprietary”
Ok, now you got it. Totally clueless. YOU point me out HOW Debian GNU/Linux is doing ”rather plaintive attempts to take free software and make Free software semi-proprietary”??? I can think of some GNU/Linux distributions who do, claiming ”their artwork is proprietary” and that therefore a ”copy of the CD is warez”. Yes, but if the artwork would be removed, it wouldn’t be. It’s only a minor problem, and people who know about this can inform others to stand up for Freedom. Claiming every GNU/Linux distro does so is a lie.
“Sorry, but taking someone else’s work and tweaking the graphics a little, perhaps adding a new installer and/or a new control panel, and then stamping your company logo on it does not turn it into your private property.”
Indeed. Only *that* specific part. Now what’s your point?
“The “product” is free for anyone who cares to look. The only thing that an OSS company has to offer that is worth paying for is convenience. Pointing a newbie to the user forums for answers is acceptable if you are talking about software that is freely downloadable. But pointing a CUSTOMER to the forums, after they have given you money in return for the expectation of technical support, is not acceptable.”
Blabla, again you’re generalizing. Name the beasts already! (yes i noticed you named a few companies in the beginning of your article but that doesn’t count).
“Customer service is it. This is all you have to offer. If your customer service is poor, then it doesn’t matter how good your graphics, or your installer, or your control panel might be.”
I disagree, and beg to differ not to see it so black vs. white. If the installer and control panel are of a user-friendly quality, then it means less customers need to call tech support or ask for service. Besides installer and control panel this also counts for other components.
“And you don’t build customer loyalty by making an especially well-tweaked version of someone else’s work. You build customer loyalty by making your customers feel special, by convincing them that they truly matter to you. And that is the only possible way to do it.”
Why? I see no arguments for your highly doubtable premises.
“As someone who has spent dreary years working with and for the public, I can say that there are some basic principles that every person who works in customer service has to keep in the forefront of their mind. These basics are not optional. You must follow these if you want to survive. Prospering is another story, I am talking about keeping a company from going under”
I understand your point,
“And a sad number of Linux companies appear to never have heard of these.”
yet you don’t call examples.
“The customer is always right”
I doubt any human id always right.
“even when they are wrong and acting like an a**hole about it.”
(There’s no point censoring those 2 *’s. Anybody with basic English will know you meant asshole. Why do you censor this?)
If someone (whoever) is wrong, and one (whoever) is right it is okay if the person who is wrong is told the truth. If there’s no clear truth, a discussion is a good alternative. Company, government, worker, child, all that status doesn’t matter imo.
“No matter what, they are still the customer and without them you don’t have an income.”
..as if money is the only target in this world. Not all companies are cooperating in a plutocratic way. I think that much is clear.
“And never allow yourself to react to anger with more anger in return. No matter what the provocation.”
If one’s angry about something, why play different and play the ”oh so nice businessmen” when that’s not your actual feeling about the matter? OTOH, being nice and gentile to people in general is better than angry, regarding a positive relation. I think this is a pretty problematic issue, and way more difficult then how you point it out.
(skipped next alinea)
“To avoid causing unnecessary friction, I will call this company “M****ake”.”
Why do you censor this companies name? What’s the use of it? I think it at best spreads frustration.
“The customer support representative replied, and I quote, “That’s nice. Thats why I bothered to answer you in the first place””
So WHAT? If that’s his opinion… if the result is you not buying their distro anymore, that’s fine. I don’t see the actual problem. You do not provide technical details, which i’d like to know because it’s important in this situation to conclude wether they did their work good or wether you were a person with ie. unsupported hardware or broken hardware.
“Always follow through on every customer complaint, no matter how trivial. This will mean spending a large amount of time on what feels like a foolish waste of energy, but you can’t escape it. The worst result that you can achieve, the very worst thing you can do to your company’s reputation, is to convince the customers that you don’t give a care. Even if it is silly, keep on top of it until the customer goes away satisfied.”
I disagree. For example, my ISP provides a load of good documentation they wrote theirselves. If i’d ask a question which is in that documentation, a short reply with an URL to it would be fine. Then, if that doesn’t help, i can e-mail them again with a more specific question.
Therefore i have the opinion that documentation and installer/control panel and more like you earlier named should be straightforward and good documented. It is simply not effective if everyone is gonna be helped as individual while it would be more productive to write documents like FAQ’s and such. Common questions, common answers.
<evade discussion about page #2 since i don’t have time for such>
“If one (1) person complains about something, you can be sure that ten (10) more are unhappy but haven’t bothered to tell you. If five (5) people complain, you can be pretty sure that one hundred (100) customers are either quietly upset, or you have already lost their business without realizing it. Every complaint matters. If one customer has a problem, there is no possible way that you can escape the certainty that other people have the same or a similar problem.”
And that’s exactly why such information should be open and why i prefer a forum or open way of discussing problems over a way with e-mail or phone. Since the information about solving a problem for user X can also be useful for user Y and Z.
“Principle #4: This is the hardest one sometimes. You have to realize, and internalize, the fact that the customer does not owe you anything at all.”
When one buys something, it is a binding agreement between 2 persons. The money paid for doesn’t mean the user is a deity. The same exists in the opposite situation. The fact a user has gotten a product doesn’t mean the company is a deity. They both do it for their own good. (my actual point will follow soon).
“Not even courtesy.”
I think, if a user flames a tech support (wo)man to dust, i understand the tech support person would say something like ”bye” *hangup* or ”please call us back when you’re cooled down” or ”please don’t flame” or something similair. If you want to expect a courteous way of being helped then act courteous yourself. Give and get…
“They paid your company money in return for something. Either they bought a product, or they hired a service. If they believe that they (the customer) did not receive good value for their money, then it is your responsibility to make it right.”
No. The user can be wrong, too. You stated earlier the user is always right; i think nobody is always right; when the user is according to tech support wrong, then tech support can say so or act accordingly. Don’t like the service? Back off and stick to another company instead of ”demanding” this is THE right AND only way.
“No matter what it takes. This is hard to keep in mind while you are being cussed at by some fool, but in all justice if they paid money and did not get what they paid for, then THEY are the ones who got screwed. If you (meaning your company) took their money then it is your responsibility to see that they get good value. Even when you want to strangle them and dump the body in some vacant lot. They are the injured party, not you.”
..if you are ”injured”, you can spread the word WITH proper evidence (which you DID NOT do here). You can chose to boycot the company.
Hey, i got a bad experience with a company too. I wrote a big post on a forum with a ”pricewatch” and stated evidence with me that they selled expensive hardware, the fact that more had problems with their hardware, and the fact that when the hardware is broken they don’t give you your money back but a vouche (that last is even illegal). I don’t like ’em, i had even more experiences with ’em, i spreaded the word, and i will never, ever buy something from them. You can chose to do the same with Mandrake and Lindows (there are more GNU/Linux distro’s, you know, but you’ve been generalizing all day long).
<skipping the rest as it will take too long and i gtg>
That said, there are various, serious flaws in your opinion and it seems you want to be adored like a lovely pet. Wake up, you’r not Holy.
What are you smoking? Damn! Don’t ever try to start a business without a monopoly. Okay?
Microsoft is desperately trying to come to grips with the simple fact that you can’t compete with free. And you can’t.
Actually you can compete with free – bottled water anybody?
Remember that OSS can have its weaknesses too. Included are less accountability to the end-user and thus uncertainty about the product’s claims, no budget for end-user research and therefore difficult-to-use products, lesser guarantee of quality support if any at all. But back to bottled water. It’s healthier to drink, tastes and smells better, and keeps longer. That is why you can sell it in the face of the competing water faucet in your kitchen. People will even drive far and wide to bring it back home. Sound crazy?
As for programmers being confrontational and bad at human interaction there is certainly that group. I am a developer and pride myself on how happy my customers are from the work I do for them. I work closely with them and understand their needs before I roll my sleeves up and get to work. Above even my profession however I am proud of being an ordinary PC user. I don’t believe users are stupid (unless you think a CD-ROM tray is a cup holder). I think programmers should be forced to visit the average customer site about once every couple of weeks and talk to people. It helps the customer understand what demands are or are not possible and helps the programmer understand how customers want to use software, not the other way around.
From the sounds of things both Mandrake and Lindows seem to suck. I am no longer a linux fan but when I was using it I found Mandrake to be one of the best so I am a bit startled to hear this. You should spread the word to more people like myself. I have yet to encounter a company on this planet that will listen to a single individual. But show up with an angry armada and watch any company pull a 180. It can be quite satisfying.
If one (1) person complains about something, you can be sure that ten (10) more are unhappy but haven’t bothered to tell you. If five (5) people complain, you can be pretty sure that one hundred (100) customers are either quietly upset, or you have already lost their business without realizing it.
Quite true, which is why i do my homework before buying anything of reasonable price. This becomes even more important when you are providing solutions to others parties/customers. You do not want to recommend/provide solutions that aren’t solutions in the first place.
Most programmers I have known act like you have attacked their firstborn when you make a remark critical of their code.
Hahaha!!! How true. These programmers are morons that are out of touch with the world. They secretly hope that the world will admire them for their code when it’s more likely that nobody will ever care to look at their code in the first place. Programmers, you are not celebrities. The best chance of you gaining any star-status is to make your company look good by creating solid, robust, easy-to-use applications. Your company’s will be held in high esteem and those in your company will know who to reward. The reward will be the opportunity to prove yourself on higher levels of development until you become a guru of xyz technology. Then you can sit next to Linus at Starbucks. Until then forget how cool yesterday’s optimizations to the sorting routines in your company’s DB are cause nobody will take notice at what you are expected to do in the first place.
Mandrake sold through local store.
Local store has a few Linux geeks who can supoport Linux.
‘Ring Ring’
‘Hello, Good Morning, Local Store here, How may we help you?’
‘I bought a computer from you guys with this thing called Mandrake on it. But the CD Rom drive does’nt work.’
‘Hang on sir, I will put you through to support’
(Internal dial)
‘Hi Support, I got a user here who bought a Mandrake box, the CD Rom is dead he says, can you take this’
‘Sure, It’ll be that Kernal bug’
‘Hi This is support’
‘Hi, This computer you guys sold us has a faulty CD Rom’
‘We know of this problem, Its two things. One, we need to recompile your Kernel, and two, we need to ship you a CD Rom’
‘We?, I don’t think so. I want a new Kernel, and a new CD Rom. Ship them to my house or get an engineer over here’
‘I’m sorry sir, recompiling the kernal is an end user task. But we’ll help you do that’
‘I want a new Kernel, so stop messing me around’
I’m just messing around, but it strikes me that supporting OSS is possible, but not easier than any other type of product. Now you can even get doen to code maintenence/fixing if you wanted to, but thats not a cheap or easy thing to do. Making promises on that side can be expensive. Losing your one and only key kernel haker might be a problem. If you choose to simply rely on the ‘community’, well you have all the pitfalls of supporting anyone elses product, and your mileage will vary. The fact is OSS works if you are a happy geeky/hacker. It starts to break down in other circumstances. OSS is touting itself as wares beyond the geeky/happy hacker areas, and as such should be jjudged on how good it really is in those areas. Thats to my mind is why IBM have said its not ready for the general desktop (Yet) and I happen to think they are about right with that.
AdmV
“About the customer is always right” bit. They are, without exceptions. The reason is that they paid for something. If you cannot satisfy their requirements you can refund the money at which point they stop being a customer and therefore no longer enter into this goo ol’ refrain. The fact that you would even argue this is enough to scare me away from whichever company it is you work for.
You seem to think that the author of this article is not entitled to support although he claims he paid for it. Yes, he could be more specific when it comes to which editions of each distro he purchased but for the sake of brevity let’s just say he purchased entitlement to support along with the convenience of obtaining each distro. When you purchase something the other party is obligated to live up to the purchase agreement. He should never be told to RTFM or to dig for the solutions himself. You seem to be keen on searching your dictionary for the meanings of words. Try “support” while you’re at it. Pointing a finger in a direction is not support no matter how broad your definition. Let’s say however for sake of argument that support = “go/look here”. If a support technician is interesting in upholding their company image they do their utmost by actually helping the end-user through the difficulties. It can only help the company in the end.
You seem to be one that would like to be pointed to a URL and left alone. Fine, but most people are not like you and that style of support is less likely to help both parties. Support comes in 2 forms: preventative and corrective. If the company can learn from all the interactions with frustrated end-users they can improve their services/products. To just assume that a person with a URL can figure things out helps nobody. You won’t know if the person solved their issue, you won’t know why it was an issue in the first place and you won’t know how to prevent similar issues in the future.
You talk about “give and get” but you contradict yourself in the earlier paragraph. The user DID give and is now wanting to GET support and a nice attitude. The user IS above the company until the user’s issue is resolved. Try to see it as a table with the customer standing at one end and the support techinician sitting at the other. The support techinician has to look up at the customer (like a Japanese bank teller). The reason for which is that the company is just one of many that can provide such services to this customer (they were originally chosen but are by no means the only providers). To not treat him/her with due repsect is unthinkable. Here’s a Japanese refrain for you: “okyakusama wa okamisama” (lit: customer IS god!) In the US the customer may not be divine but is certainly above the company. We hope the end-user will not curse but they may at times. Treating the end-user with the same level of disrespect solves absolutely nothing and can even hurt the company. Treating the end-user with respect avoids such confrontation in the first place and we don’t need to go there. If the Mandrake support personnel did indeed speak the way s/he was quoted then s/he should be relegated to packing boxes or should be supported to (pointed-to) the nearest Domimo’s Pizza to look for new work.
“About the customer is always right” bit. They are, without exceptions. The reason is that they paid for something. If you cannot satisfy their requirements you can refund the money at which point they stop being a customer and therefore no longer enter into this goo ol’ refrain. The fact that you would even argue this is enough to scare me away from whichever company it is you work for.
I think the bigger issue is that if the customer has bought a copy of Red Hat Linux and they find their hardware isn’t supported, it is up to the support staff to either simply say, “sorry sir/madam, that device isn’t supported by Red Hat Linux” or if it is supported, either via loading a module or switching a feature on, then they should step the customer through it.
The customer would much rather get told “your hardware isn’t supported” than being held on the line for 3 hours being told to do this that and this.
If the customer is interested they customer may then initiate the next of the conversation, “oh, what (in this example) camera is supported by Red Hat Linux”, assuming that the customer has just bought the hardware and may be able to swap it for another one that is compatible.
So yes, the customer is right, however, the support person also has to cut their losses when all things fail. As I said previously, the customer would rather get told straight up instead of being dicked around.
You seem to think that the author of this article is not entitled to support although he claims he paid for it. Yes, he could be more specific when it comes to which editions of each distro he purchased but for the sake of brevity let’s just say he purchased entitlement to support along with the convenience of obtaining each distro. When you purchase something the other party is obligated to live up to the purchase agreement. He should never be told to RTFM or to dig for the solutions himself. You seem to be keen on searching your dictionary for the meanings of words. Try “support” while you’re at it. Pointing a finger in a direction is not support no matter how broad your definition. Let’s say however for sake of argument that support = “go/look here”. If a support technician is interesting in upholding their company image they do their utmost by actually helping the end-user through the difficulties. It can only help the company in the end.
Also, considering that he bought the box product, the whole point of buying a boxed product is to received bundled support, both software updates and technical support via the phone.
I don’t blame the author. He paid for a service which he was entitled to under his support contract and yet, he didn’t receive it. Caldera is another company I experience the “f**ck off!” support and sales attitude. Ever contacted sales and after a month no receive a reply? sorry Caldera/SCO, I gave you the opportunity to make $1000+ off me, you lost it, tough luck, now SUN has my business.
You seem to be one that would like to be pointed to a URL and left alone. Fine, but most people are not like you and that style of support is less likely to help both parties. Support comes in 2 forms: preventative and corrective. If the company can learn from all the interactions with frustrated end-users they can improve their services/products. To just assume that a person with a URL can figure things out helps nobody. You won’t know if the person solved their issue, you won’t know why it was an issue in the first place and you won’t know how to prevent similar issues in the future.
Most people also want to be guided through, step by step so that any error messages that do occur, they can tell the support person and the issue can be resolved then and there.
(had to respond to this).
I was down town last weekend, drinking with some friends. A fight broke out with some drunken idiot starting a fight with another punter. Security (ie, bouncers) come up and throw this guy out before the trouble gets too bad with as little fuss as possible to everyone else. Surprisingly efficient and professional. Drunken fool stands outside the doors demanding to be let in so he can finish his fight. Everyone else inside breathes a sigh of relief that he is gone.
Drunken fool is a customer. Was he “always right”? Clearly no, but according to the points of view in here, he should have been allowed in to start more trouble on innocent people.
Please remember, nobody is “always right”. Like the author of the article, I used to work in public service (the civil service). I have been threatened with violence, with having my house burned down, and my family attacked. Are the people that do this “right” to demand the right to do this even if they are justified in their complaint?
I’m not sure why this article targets OSS. I have had the same experience with M******ft! I was researching client side database for replication into server side database because the client was disconnected throughout the day. M******ft support line demanded $125 per call to discuss, and were rude on the phone. Although we had purchased all products and support, they were not able to provide a solution to the problem.
I have to strongly disagree with this article: the customer has no right to be discourteous to the service agent. That is a myth. Where on earth is it written that it is not okay to abuse another living human being unless he or she happens to work in the service industry?
Why should an OSS company bankrupt itself doing something that a monopoly will not? Why should an OSS company break itself bend over backward to please all customers when private corporations will not?
Furthermore, it would appear that no one purchases operating systems from M******ft – the first thing you must do with a new operating system is check what hardware will it support – and then go out and purchase it to replace your “legacy” hardware. Why is the expectation different for OSS?
First, if the customer is too much of an a**hole, then sometimes you don’t want or need them as a customer. Why? Because time is money, and if you spend too much time to smooth ruffled feathers so to speak, the customer has become a loss for you money wise and are not worth supporting.
Second, your assumption that distributions are merely selling services and someone else’s software is wrong. For example, a good portion of the administrative software included by RedHat was written and developed completely by RedHat internally. This means that those components which add a significant value to the product are theirs. So RedHat is in reality selling more than just services. Just as SUSE is (they do the same thing). Although the difference between SUSE and RedHat is that RedHat keeps their tools under an open source license that allows free reuse and redistribution and modification unlike SUSE does with Yast, etc.
Third, this article was obviously written in an angry mood no good can come of that…
This article is total crap. “Support sucked for distro X so Linux support sucks”. That’s all he really said. Two measly examples and a bunch of nonsense inbetween. How about a survey of all the popular Linux distros? Ask the same questions and see how each fares. This would give a better picture overall. Maybe Linux support really does suck but this article doesn’t really show anything.
Hmmm…SSH in, see what the problem is and fix. If you need to replace hardware? Then you need to replace, simple as that.
Two if we’re going to use “quality of service” as criteria for “market success” then a lot of proprietary companies shouldn’t be in business. I’ll let you all figure out why reality doesn’t agree with your “desires.”
I owned and operated a business for 12 years. It took me a few years to realize that there are times that a customer is wrong and there comes a time to fire them. Yes, fire a customer before it becomes a nightmare.
This principle is quite simple – know your market. Many times people will come to you as a business owner and act as if they are your customer. In reality, they are not. You must be wise enough to determine whether they are your customer – and if they are not – then get rid of them. This leaves you free to focus on your customers. Period.
After I accepted this principle – the business went from a company struggling to make 100K in annual sales to over 3 million annually. Profitability went through the roof.
Red Hat is using this principle – and I suspect they will succeed too. My only surprise is that they didn’t spin off a company to take care of Fedora as added insurance (a backup plan must exist somewhere for them, right?).
IMHO, customer service does not mean wiping someone’s @ss. It means helping them help themselves. Someone who wants their @ss wiped should go elsewhere – they are not a true and valued customer because respect goes both ways.
This is extremely important in the Linux community. If you mistreat someone (as many do) then you should expect it in return. Interestingly, these flames are common. So common, in fact, that some sick people think it is fun rather than destructive. There are even those who think flaming is a necessary and vital part of the community.
Actually, the flames have been the focus of the community for way too long and should cease because they are now seen as poor customer service. And this is why some people should not use or talk about Linux. They should be fired. They should just go back to DOS, Windows, and/or just shut off their machines.
OK, I have other truisms too — but enough for now — I’m sure someone here will disagree 😉
I happen to work Customer Support and agree with the article. If you take out some of the personal examples the points he makes is correct. If one person has a given problem then it is very likly that other do too. If someone pays for a product they expect personal service to resovle issues, period. I have experenced the same types of issues when trying to move to Linux. I thought if I paid for it I would get the help I needed. I too was wrong and therefore simply do not use Linux. Point is, if someone is willing to pay for OOS software then Customer Serveice is very, very important. A point missed by the major, and minor, distributions avaliable.
P.S. Not that MS does much better, but they do a little better.
At least we’ve gotten to the point where users are thinking about customer support.
Now, all we have to do is get rid of all the hobbyists and replace them with BusinessMen(R) and after that, Linux can go downhill with all the rest.
“”About the customer is always right” bit. They are, without exceptions. The reason is that they paid for something. If you cannot satisfy their requirements you can refund the money at which point they stop being a customer and therefore no longer enter into this goo ol’ refrain. The fact that you would even argue this is enough to scare me away from whichever company it is you work for.”
Good to know. Ok, then it is for Microsoft
j/k.
I pay taxes to my country. Police is funded by taxes. If i get threatened when i walk near *that* disco full with angry people, do i get what i paid for, or not? Common sense imo. Speaking about taxes, those have a service too. When i come around there, and the question is explained in the manual they provide to everyone, they tell me in a polite way to read that thing, because that’s what it was made for. I can go on writing about the fact customers are not Holy or the King – and they should not, because that creates lazyness.
“You seem to think that the author of this article is not entitled to support although he claims he paid for it. Yes, he could be more specific when it comes to which editions of each distro he purchased”
..and *a lot* more details in order to be convincing, imo.
“but for the sake of brevity let’s just say he purchased entitlement to support along with the convenience of obtaining each distro. When you purchase something the other party is obligated to live up to the purchase agreement. He should never be told to RTFM or to dig for the solutions himself. You seem to be keen on searching your dictionary for the meanings of words. Try “support” while you’re at it. Pointing a finger in a direction is not support no matter how broad your definition.”
I take it customers aren’t babies therefore customers do not need to be held an arm in order to walk? If it is in the manual, a point *to* the manual (in a Read-The-Fine-Manual way) is okay with me. It is stupid when i read from a book what you have to do while you can read that damn book yourself.
“Let’s say however for sake of argument that support = “go/look here”. If a support technician is interesting in upholding their company image they do their utmost by actually helping the end-user through the difficulties. It can only help the company in the end.”
I agree, therefore if customer support doesn’t do the job well they’ll blow theirselves up, much like digging your own grave. And, then the customer can go to a baby-support company and pay for that (read: pay a lot more, because more techies are needed at support dept.).
What i’d argue is that the meaning of support and what it exactly means should be very clear. Does the service mean ”help-the-baby” or only in-dept questions which aren’t answered in the book or in the FAQ?
“You seem to be one that would like to be pointed to a URL and left alone. Fine, but most people are not like you and that style of support is less likely to help both parties.”
Such people can stay with a lazy OS for lazy people who want to feel special with their phone call and don’t want to act theirselves. If such GNU/Linux distro doesn’t exist then you go stick with some other OS, i can’t care less.
If the info is on the FAQ/Website/In the book, a pointer to it is fine IMO. If THAT doesn’t help [or ie. the user doesn’t have internet (working) while info is on the site], THEN it is a whole different story. The people with the common questions which are well known and documented fill up spaces for the people with REAL problems at tech/customer support. Nobody wrote FAQs and books for _this_ purpose.
“Support comes in 2 forms: preventative and corrective. If the company can learn from all the interactions with frustrated end-users they can improve their services/products. To just assume that a person with a URL can figure things out helps nobody. You won’t know if the person solved their issue, you won’t know why it was an issue in the first place and you won’t know how to prevent similar issues in the future.”
This can be done in a FAQ. Zeta has this for example, so does iirc Sun and IBM. They provide an option: ”was this question/article useful”? One can vote then.
If they can’t solve it that way they can call back or if it takes short the phone can remain active.
“You talk about “give and get” but you contradict yourself in the earlier paragraph. The user DID give and is now wanting to GET support and a nice attitude. The user IS above the company until the user’s issue is resolved. Try to see it as a table with the customer standing at one end and the support techinician sitting at the other. The support techinician has to look up at the customer (like a Japanese bank teller). The reason for which is that the company is just one of many that can provide such services to this customer (they were originally chosen but are by no means the only providers). To not treat him/her with due repsect is unthinkable. Here’s a Japanese refrain for you: “okyakusama wa okamisama” (lit: customer IS god!) In the US the customer may not be divine but is certainly above the company. We hope the end-user will not curse but they may at times. Treating the end-user with the same level of disrespect solves absolutely nothing and can even hurt the company. Treating the end-user with respect avoids such confrontation in the first place and we don’t need to go there. If the Mandrake support personnel did indeed speak the way s/he was quoted then s/he should be relegated to packing boxes or should be supported to (pointed-to) the nearest Domimo’s Pizza to look for new work.”
(I disagree, and i think my point is/was clear. A customer has indeed a right to demand support, but i call pointing a user to website/book which they can receive: support).
I take it you know the meaning of ”Karoshi” too? Customers don’t suffer from that by instead of listening to a phone, reading a website/book which contains the very same information. Helpdeskers and companies suffer, by explaining the same over and over again.
If you read this article and you feel the four principles are not true, or somehow skewed, you are in the majority of people who do not understand customer service. If so, go back and re-read the article (skipping the personal accounts) and take it as gospel. I guarantee that anyone who has ever worked in customer service will know every one of these principles, and will agree with them. They are not foibles, but fact. I will back that up 100% from my own experience both working in retail/customer service when I was younger and running my own software company for the last 10 years. When I worked in retail (Dick Smith Electronics in Australia), these principles were drummed into us repeatedly by management during regular meetings. I followed those principles in practice and discovered that they really do work. The experience I learnt back then has stayed with me through the 10 years of running my software company.
I do agree however that there are times when it is time to let go of a customer, but you are not firing a customer. If it gets to the point where you cannot solve the customers problem, issue a refund as the article mentioned. It should be a last resort, but a refund *will* make the customer happy (or happier). Eventually they may come back and buy from you again later, but most important is they won’t go around trashing you and your company to their friends. Word of mouth can be one of the best ways to market your company and products, but it can also be the quickest way to bankruptcy court.
i’m a newbie.
i want a linux desktop that will make me happy.
company x, y and z better help me with my problems.
i was a newbie once.
my goal was to learn linux, so i could use it for servers, workstations and my personal machines.
i downloaded freely, redhat linux.
that was two years ago.
i’m not a newbie any more. i manage many servers for clients, and i’m also a linux instructor.
what you need sir…is a mac.
and when you completely F up your mac, you can call tech support and they will have you do a “system restore”
Hello All,
Isn’t ease-of-use a catch-22 for OSS software creators / distributers?
If you’re selling software that’s easy to use, presumably, less people will buy your “support.” Ergo, the easier you make your software to use, the less money you will receive?
isn’t this a bad business model?
Can companies REALLY work this way?
If there’s any open source vendors here, please list a business model–I can’t seem to think of one that is sustainable, that as the better / easier to use your software gets, the more $$$ you will receive.
The only semi-open model that appears to make sense is the one ID software uses: go proprietary first, make up all the money you spent of development & some profit, then open source your code (I don’t remember the license they use, but I think if you want to SELL their code, you have to pay them.)
Please help me to understand the macro/micro economics of OSS as a business.
thanks
“”About the customer is always right” bit. They are, without exceptions.”
So if you’re an architect, and your customers suddenly want you to remove the 10 pillars that’s supporting your sky craper, then you’ll do what they want without exceptions, even if that means the whole building will collapse?
Yeah right. Customers are not gods! They are not always right!
“then open source your code (I don’t remember the license they use, but I think if you want to SELL their code, you have to pay them.)”
The Quake I, II, Doom, and lots of other ID engines are released under the GPL. You do NOT have to pay them for using the engine. You do NOT have to pay them in order to play a 3rd party level either online or offline. What you do have to pay them for, just like you had before it was GPL, is the original data files of the original games which contain the original artwork and original levels. Those do not come with the GPLed engine. A demo is included, though, and futher on it’s fully functional – except for what i said earlier. If you have a copy of the game, you can just copy the data files over. There are even installers for this, see for example icculus.org
“This article is total crap. “Support sucked for distro X so Linux support sucks”. That’s all he really said. Two measly examples and a bunch of nonsense inbetween. How about a survey of all the popular Linux distros?”
here is the deal, you can’t come back and say this distro sucks, he should try this one. You have to look at it as a whole. A person trying linux is basicly going to try whatever they get their hands on. Distros don’t really matter, cause in the end people arn’t going to research it, they hear about linux and go to the store and buy what they see there on the shelf.
When you look at the state of linux you have to take all the distro’s mix them in one pot. and all the worst bits of each one is the state of linux. The lowest common denominator. Then every look at linux will be better. But by looking at that, that is what a new person, or anyone is looking at. Saying that something is just a problem of this distro, use this one instead will not get linux anywheres. A problem in one distro shows on them all, or even apps. If there is a problem out there, a new person is going to find it, and it’s going to drive them mad. This is part of the problem of linux, there is all the distros, getting help for a problem is hard because no one has the same setup. To sort out all the problems is impossible do to the incredible amount of variety. With windows, OSX, beos, freebsd, it’s much more easy, what one person has to the next is more unified. Linux is ok if your going for something very specialized, but for the masses of desktop use it just will not happen as things are going.
Invalid assumptions in this article:
#1 – the OSS company sterotype is the only type of company with a customer service problem
#2 – the OSS business model being defined as a company using open source to get the public to develop its software and should offer free support
Rationale:
#1 – I previously mentioned that I have had horrific bouts with the Microsoft Customer Service people. I have had nightmare dealings with the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and Bank of Montreal. Clearly, these are successful companies revenue wise, but they are as compassionate to their customers as Sadam Huesein is to his people. Hostile and non-existant customer support is industry wide. Why does the OSS company have to achieve standards that other companies do not???
#2 – Every company is free to decide their own service level. Private companies do not support their own product, and there is no law stating that they must. Get over it. If a company wants to offer bad or non-existant service, they can, but they may reap the results – a bad reputation.
A company may want to offer customer service, but only at a price. The Microsoft 6-packs for $500 was 6 service calls for the price of 5. Did the complainers of Linux distribution support dole out the customer support money, or did they whine about that they “deserve” it for free?
I contributed heavily to an open source project, which you will now find in source forge. I spent my own time helping an OSS company to stablize and enhance their product. I did not receive a single penny – and I did not expect to either. I received a lot of abusive e-mails from customers who download software for free and then whined and complained as though they were royalty and that their dignity was somehow injured.
Most OSS companies are attempting to build their product before really becoming a full fledged company selling a product. This is very similar to the model where a company has investors and have so many years to produce and sell a product, except the OSS company typically does not have investors and are trying to release the product in an incomplete state to a) attract attention and b) provide feedback for direction of the product. The early stages of an OSS company is not built off the telephone company customer service model. Go to source forge and see for yourself.
Finally, some companies go OSS as a form of customer support. Say you sell a product which runs web based on all platforms that support PHP. Are you seriously expecting the company to man the switch boards with 150 agents who are technically competant (i.e. could have a developer job somewhere else making 5 times the wages)? No. You are expecting technically competant customers to download the system. If they find a problem they are to fix it themselves and send the fix back to the company.
If my response is all over the board and crossing many domains, then welcome to the OSS community.
And I gave it up. Customers expect you to treat them with respect, but at the same time, they don’t want to give any of it back. I got tired of somebody calling me up and yelling at me as soon as I pick up the phone, and I don’t even know who they are. A little common courtesy goes a long way in BOTH directions. If you are going to treat me like sh*t, then expect to be treated the same way, whether or not I am the customer or the employer. I just don’t like rude people PEROID.
As for Linux support, I have found that dejanews does wonders
I have also found it works great with Windows too. Personally, I don’t even bother with phone support even when it’s available, because it’s usually very, very bad. I end up getting some guy located in some foregin country, who’s name I can’t even pronounce and who’s English is so bad that I don’t understand a word of it. I have found that using the web and newsgroups, I can usually find the answer to my problem in a matter of minutes.
KaroUshi is my job.
It’s the reason my company can stay alive despite overwhelming competition and why customers return to us or recommend us to others. Everybody’s happy, I have job-security and am the most qualified to comment on the benefits of such a work ethic.
The more you talk the more I hope you are in the Linux industry. I have little interest in Linux so our chance of doing business would be minimal.
I like this opinion piece and think it has something important to say. But the premise of the opening paragraphs isn’t entirely correct. People pay good money for OSS for several reasons in addition to support and convenience:
1) as a reliable source of the software (quality assurance, interoperability, sometimes usability testing; probable absence of spyware/viruses)
2) for a specific version of the software that interoperates with other software vendors’ offerings
3) for a specific version of the software that can be referred to in discussions with other users
4) to support the vendor so they can continue robust development efforts to enhance and maintain the product
Thanks for the kind remark, april_fool. But you said:
“…the premise of the opening paragraphs isn’t entirely correct. People pay good money for OSS for several reasons in addition to support and convenience:
1) as a reliable….”
etc.
But…aren’t all of the things you mention services? They were certainly part of the total “service” package to me. They were the kind of thing I was talking about. Providing a consistent, reliable, and dependable user experience is part of the essence of any service-based business.
I simply meant that no one can actually sell Linux as such, since it belongs to everyone who contributed. What companies sell are a limited amount of customizations, along with the service end of things, which include consistency, convenience and technical support. That’s what it says on the package anyway.
And I am not talking about Fedora, or Debian, or any other freely downloadable distro. If it is free for anyone, then the user is free to take their chances and should not expect anything else.
But you know, it is interesting that many of the “free” distros offer better “customer service” than I have seen from some of the commercial companies. The Knoppix forum is a good example of excellent “service” even though the distro is free to download and no one has any moral responsbility to offer anything. Yet people put time and patient effort into doing it anyway.
Whereas some commercial distros act as if you are infringing on their freedom to nap if you pester them with questions. Or try to ask them why hardware that was *specified on the hardware list to work with that distro* does not in fact work after all.
I meant that there are dozens or hundreds of Linux distros available, but with a top 3 vendor you can be assured of rigorous testing of the ensemble. In other words, much of the “service” took place before the sale, and I’d say those particular vendors did do their fair share. Yes, you can usually download their offerings for free but many people avoid doing that for reasons of convenience, sense of fairness, or both.
read the article and one thing comes to my mind – does the author have any customer/technical support experience to talk that way? i guess if he had one he would be talking from the other side of the table.
The article makes many valid points. However, I see the issues as generic problems of getting vendor support. There is no special case for Open Source. Every single problem mentioned in the article is equally common for proprietary product support.
For proprietary products, the situation might be even worse. Have you tried contacting Microsoft about software support for somebody’s sound board? Usually you are told to contact the hardware vendor.
Sometimes a hardware product may be supported under one of the Microsoft operating systems, not on others. Imagine Microsoft’s answer to your queries for this problem.
The article misdirects the reader by pointing the finger at open source vendors only.
I really enjoyed writing my “reduction to absurdity” response where I substituted Porn for OSS and wrote a summary for each “rule”. Try it yourself, because the editor in OSNEWS suffers greatly from closed mindedness, similar to the author of the article, and so censored the response. The results are entertaining, which is predictable since “absurdity”, from the latin phrase, actually meant humourous. You will see how rediculus this article is.
here is the deal, you can’t come back and say this distro sucks, he should try this one. You have to look at it as a whole. A person trying linux is basicly going to try whatever they get their hands on. Distros don’t really matter, cause in the end people arn’t going to research it, they hear about linux and go to the store and buy what they see there on the shelf.
When you look at the state of linux you have to take all the distro’s mix them in one pot. and all the worst bits of each one is the state of linux. The lowest common denominator. Then every look at linux will be better. But by looking at that, that is what a new person, or anyone is looking at. Saying that something is just a problem of this distro, use this one instead will not get linux anywheres. A problem in one distro shows on them all, or even apps. If there is a problem out there, a new person is going to find it, and it’s going to drive them mad. This is part of the problem of linux, there is all the distros, getting help for a problem is hard because no one has the same setup. To sort out all the problems is impossible do to the incredible amount of variety. With windows, OSX, beos, freebsd, it’s much more easy, what one person has to the next is more unified. Linux is ok if your going for something very specialized, but for the masses of desktop use it just will not happen as things are going.
So if I have a bad experience with Dell’s support does that mean that all PC manufacturer support sucks? The article is totally misleading. It should have been about Lindows and Mandrake, not all of Linux. The author is trying to give support tips to all Linux vendors when he doesn’t even know the current state of support in Linux. Two examples mean nothing. It is rediculous to assume the state of an entire industry based on two support calls. This article will serve only as a reference for misguided attacks made by less knowledgable people.
“So if I have a bad experience with Dell’s support does that mean that all PC manufacturer support sucks?”
you hit it right on and got right to my point. For many people, just read stuff here long enough especialy when a mac vs wintel flame comes up and you will see many many people do equate that one bad expericance with one maker is what all of them are like. So they go to a mac or some such. In reality there are good manufactures out there, dell themselves is one, but bad things will happen to some people. This same thing is going to happen to linux. If people have the same kinda bad expericance with one distro they will reflect it on others. And just not use linux. Tandy is not at all reflective of most PC makers, yet many people arguing against windows, or PCs will point to some bad expericance with a tandy in 1995 and think that is reflective of PC’s today. You can’t seperate linux issues from distro to distro, it all reflects back at linux as a whole.
The article wasn’t off at all. Those two companies are effecting the image of linux in general. Same as linux in general shows back on them. They are going for being easy distros. People getting an image of Linux being hard from Debian or Gentoo or Slackware is not going to help them. It all goes around.
Can you really make money from services (emphasis on support) at the consumer level? Redhat and SuSE have done the best job, but both of these are looking at the Enterprise, that are replacing outrageously priced proprietary Unix boxes. Enterprises are happy to pay Redhat and SuSE what they are asking. But, the consumer can’t pay that kind of money. So how can someone like Lindows afford to charge a small amount of money for it’s “service”, and pay the wages demanded by “quality” support staff? In fact, you could argue that there are very few “quality” support people (technically sound and customer/people oriented). I know for a fact that they are hard to find, and you can’t rate them on a single user experience (everyone has their bad days!).
With that said, this article is “spot-on” as far as what customer expectations are, and should be. Why should you expect anything less. I thought the examples were very good, and I would have been upset too. Considering he had several personal examples, it’s hard to argue that these were really good support people just having a bad day. Odds are that they really were poor support people, maybe just out of place technical people.
So, the question remains: Can you make money off of OSS in the consumer market? I wish I could think of a sure-fire way, then I could quit this stinking support job