

37signals support satisfaction ratings now public - wlll
http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2774-smiley-goes-public-now-everyone-can-see-how-our-customers-feel-about-our-customer-support

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fredoliveira
I have to give it to these guys (I work on a competitor product). Even though
this is a simple idea and possibly something of trivial implementation, it's
clear, honest, and just plain _nice_. My hat is off to them for keeping their
customers happy - very well done.

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trustfundbaby
What product do you work on?

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fredoliveira
I don't want to pee on anyone's parade - I honestly don't - so I would hate to
link to it here, even though it's "competition". I'll link to it on my profile
instead.

(Never imagined me writing this, actually, but I think it makes sense. I truly
do admire these folks for this particular project - I wish I had thought of it
myself, I'll tell you that)

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frossie
If you mean webreakstuff.com, may I gently suggest you have a landing page
that does not make explicit reference to 2010...

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fredoliveira
I don't, but I appreciate the note. Will update (we've been busy - a good
thing).

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sudonim
The subtle dig at getsatisfaction was interesting. (For history:
<http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1650-get-satisfaction-or-else> ).

This is a good show of selective transparency. The last 100 should serve to
make potential customers feel warm and fuzzy without actually showing anything
to potentially discourage them (other than if the last 100 were :(
complaints)).

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jasonfried
For the record, it's not a subtle dig at getsatisfaction. "Customer
satisfaction" has been a term used by the companies for decades. We don't
think satisfaction is a very high bar. We're fighting against low
expectations.

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alexophile
Do you publish response rates? Things like this always scream selection bias
to me. If it were, say 90/7/3, but it took 300 interactions to get 100
responses, that seems like a misrepresentation.

That being said - I really appreciate the idea, but it only really works if
you trust the company already. I have plenty of reason to believe 37s (even
applied to be a part of the team being tracked,) but if this were State Farm
or Comcast or something like that, it would be a pretty laughable concept.

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jasonfried
I believe around 15% of our customers respond with a rating. From what I
understand that's pretty high as far as these sorts of things go. I think that
would be considered a reasonable sample.

We don't ask randomly, we ask everyone, so everyone is free to offer up a
rating.

CORRECTION: Just reviewed the stats again and it looks like the response rate
is in the mid 30s.

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clain
Jason, the issue is not whether the sample is large enough--a 30+% response
rate strikes me as very high, and I suspect given your support volume you're
getting several hundred responses per day.

The issue, instead, is whether the people who choose to respond--to take
another step after their support encounter and rate the quality of service--
are representative of all users, including the majority who do not rate the
experience. That's a tough hypothesis to test, and I suspect it could cut
either way: the happiest customers may choose to respond since they so enjoyed
the experience, or the angriest may choose to respond since they want you to
be aware of their disappointment. Finding out which (if either) of these is
occurring is tricky, though.

That said, I certainly don't mean to impugn what you're doing here. I love the
transparency and I think you probably are getting a fairly good snapshot of
overall customer satisfaction. Also, even if there is a response bias, you can
safely use these numbers to benchmark over time, which I suspect would be very
useful.

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allwein
I wish that I could click on the individual smiley faces and find out the
facts of the statuses. For some reason it's driving me nuts that I don't know
why the frowny faces are unhappy.

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jasonfried
We have access to that, but we can't share it since the comments often include
confidential information.

The biggest source of unhappiness is when we can't deliver a feature request
immediately.

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Groxx
Maybe you could add a "let the internet know why" field?

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r00k
Unfortunately, they're not able to deliver that feature request immediately.

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sammcd
From what i can tell it looks like the satisfaction rate has declined since
this went live. I wonder if the fact that this is public info has changed the
responses some how.

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xbryanx
Gah! Their support email example uses two! exclamation marks! I'd! be torn as
to whether to give them a grimace or a frown on that point alone!!

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marcamillion
Hrmm...not to be disgusting, but you would take a live example of a company
doing right by their customers to rain on their parade because they used two
exclamation marks instead of one?

 _sigh_ Sometimes people can make mountains out of molehills.

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Groxx
But there are two! molehills!!

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cfontes
This is a company I would definitely would like to work. Always innovating and
with some very nice products.

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joelrunyon
How long till people start gaming this & submitting bad customer support
tickets, just to spite them?

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brianpan
I don't see the point of getting a frowny face on a website for fun. But the
point is, if you're not happy then putting a frown is exactly what you
_should_ do to let them know you weren't happy. Out of spite or whatever other
reason, the point of customer support is trying to make those people happy
customers.

