
The $4 Million Complaint Call (2012) - solaris152000
http://www.inc.com/ron-burley/4-million-complaint-call.html
======
incision
Nice story. I generally agree the message, particularly the concept and phrase
of an "internal champion". As demonstrated that one person can make or break
you.

I've witnessed similar situations play out more than once, but to the negative
with bad service aimed at seemingly insignificant people killing six and seven
figure orders.

That said, I think you're missing something if the potential windfall is your
impetus for quality service.

"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do
nothing for him." —Malcolm S. Forbes [0]

0: [http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/10/28/judge-
character/](http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/10/28/judge-character/)

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Is it [largely] factual? I couldn't work it out quickly as it's told in first
person but the tag line and mini-resume doesn't mention anything that suggests
the writer writes radio broadcasting software.

The third para from the end suggests it's at least somewhat fictionalised.

+++

Oh, found this
[http://www.bsiusa.com/about/about.php](http://www.bsiusa.com/about/about.php)
(seems Burley didn't know much about trademarks when he set out?).

Edit: Also
[http://www.paulneevel.com/hp_archive/070830ronburley.html](http://www.paulneevel.com/hp_archive/070830ronburley.html).

------
ColinWright
If you value feedback from the HN collective then you probably should read the
extensive discussion from the last time this was submitted:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4081390](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4081390)

There are many points and counter-points there, with more anecdotes, and some
data.

Comments there are closed, of course, it being so old, so any new discussion
will have to be here.

~~~
ChuckMcM
I suspect it is simpler, they don't care about HN's feedback.

A simple check of the account would suggest that they needed a bit of karma,
their submission of the Hudsonreed site was DOA (as most, 'create an account,
submit a site' type submissions are). They haven't made any comments to get
karma that way, so they use the 'other' well known karma farming technique,
scrape HN for past stories that were popular and re-submit them at the 'right'
time. It has become enough of a signal that I suspect pg could add it into his
heuristics for spammers.

~~~
solaris152000
Actually someone at work shared it on Yammer and I thought people here might
like it. I didn't realise Karma was of any value to be farmed. Sorry for...
trying to share things?

~~~
ChuckMcM
Welcome to HN.

It is a pretty popular web site with a part of the technical crowd. It gets
analyzed a lot [1][2]. It also gets a lot of 'spam' (since coverage on the
front page of HN can send you lots of traffic [3][4][5]) HN "scores" its
participants using a counter 'karma' [6] which also affects features visible
to your account (well at least the down vote button) And with any 'score'
there are people who score more than others [7]. And where there is scoring
there is competition.

The bottom line is that certain behaviors emerge for people who actively try
to achieve a 'high score' (more karma) and people who are trying to achieve
'viriality'[8] (more exposure).

It was unkind of me to point out the behavior (usually I just note it and
ignore it) and for that I apologize.

Colin (grandparent posting) has a 'thing' about stuff that gets doubly or
triply or more posted. I understand the annoyance, it can get annoying. But
I've also noted that he posts a _lot_ of links :-) A number of people tend to
complain when their version of the link doesn't make it to the front page when
someone else's done (it's a 'I'm not getting that karma whine') And generally
harmless (other than it sometimes back fires and they get down voted for
whining)

[1] [http://blog.rjmetrics.com/surprising-hacker-news-data-
analys...](http://blog.rjmetrics.com/surprising-hacker-news-data-analysis/)

[2] [http://hn-karma-tracker.herokuapp.com/overall](http://hn-karma-
tracker.herokuapp.com/overall)

[3] [http://thestartupfoundry.com/2011/05/26/hacker-news-and-
driv...](http://thestartupfoundry.com/2011/05/26/hacker-news-and-drive-by-
traffic-how-to-make-the-most-of-your-startups-launch/)

[4] [http://sparknlaunch.wordpress.com/2012/07/04/lessons-
learned...](http://sparknlaunch.wordpress.com/2012/07/04/lessons-learned-from-
a-hacker-news-spike/)

[5] [http://pitchpigeon.com/blog/10-lessons-learned-from-a-
succes...](http://pitchpigeon.com/blog/10-lessons-learned-from-a-successful-
hacker-news-launch.html)

[6] [http://pitchpigeon.com/blog/10-lessons-learned-from-a-
succes...](http://pitchpigeon.com/blog/10-lessons-learned-from-a-successful-
hacker-news-launch.html)

[7]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders](https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders)

[8] Not exactly a word, but my definition would be the rate at which things
spread, especially on the Internet.

~~~
solaris152000
OK thanks for the welcome and explanation. I'll check my next submission is
original before I post it next time. I've lurked here for quite a while and
have enjoyed the content. Although it is harder to understand the rules
compared to somewhere like Digg. Better content though.

~~~
ColinWright
If you're new and haven't become enculturated, there may be value in your
reading jacquesm's unofficial FAQ:

[http://www.jacquesmattheij.com/The+Unofficial+HN+FAQ](http://www.jacquesmattheij.com/The+Unofficial+HN+FAQ)

Bits of it are a little out-of-date, and there are some things it hasn't
caught up with, but it's mostly right, and some people find it useful.

------
MiguelHudnandez
I like this story. I have provided this level of support in the past and it
made me proud. But beware the lesson you learn from this "$4m call" story.

The lesson could easily be: I played the lotto and won big. Therefore,
everyone should play the lotto.

~~~
aidos
Really? Going to extra mile to support your customers will give you a good
reputation. It's nothing to do with playing the lottery. In this case it paid
off in a big way. In the general case over the lifetime of your business it
will almost certainly help you out somewhere.

I've just finished several freelance jobs where I've made sure to go above
what was required. That's several people who will recommend me to others.
That's not playing the lottery, it's just a sensible way of operating.

~~~
seldo
But the alternative possibility, when running a retail business, is that you
blow 90% of your time being extra-nice to existing customers and never get
around to building the features that would have attracted new users. It
depends what stage of growth your business is at; the bigger you get, the
unpleasant reality is that the less important any individual customer becomes.

~~~
MiguelHudnandez
I definitely fell into the latter category. Of the total time I spent doing
customer service, there were about ten people I knew on a first-name basis.
They had my personal e-mail address and I'd always respond to them within a
half hour, often with a call back.

I never did have good tracking metrics in place for time spent per customer. I
was a one-man shop and this was in 2000-2003, so there were limited open
source options.

Customer support ate up a little more than half my time. This took away from
programming and business development. Of the customer support time, maybe five
or ten percent was spent on these ten customers -- and that is out of ten
thousand paying customers and a few hundred thousand free users.

I never got a four million dollar phone call, but I also don't know how much
these ten users evangelized my services. Who knows -- maybe they were
responsible for a thousand paying customers?

There's an old phrase: "I know half of my ad dollars are wasted, but I don't
know which half!" Nowadays it's a lot easier to measure return, but I still
think we're not at the point where we can quantify good will from customer
service.

------
mgaphysics
Being a champion of world class service is always the goal and stories like
this never get old. Keep in mind that there are also hidden/intangible costs
associated with delivery of this level of service, for every "Bob the 4
million dollar client", there are 10 "John the 2 hour time-syncs". I am not
saying that you should not strive for world-class service, because you should.
I would speak more to pricing your services accordingly and not under valuing
them to the point where you cannot take care of clients properly.

------
jacalata
Kind of an entertaining coincidence that the other post from inc.com on the
front page right now is called 'Never be a customers
doormat'.[[http://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/never-be-a-customers-
doorm...](http://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/never-be-a-customers-
doormat.html?cid=sf01001)]

------
chasing
As noted in the other HN thread, this is a great example of taking time out to
help a customer that's having a tough time and reaping a reward.

But.

While it can be great to have a general philosophy of "always provide the best
customer service possible, even at 2am, no matter the customer," a great CEO
will need to act based on the realities of their business situation --
informed by these philosophies, but not locked down by them.

I agree that in the context of business you should always be as nice as
possible, no matter how difficult of a time you're having with someone. But
some customers aren't the right customers for your business, and they should
be guided elsewhere.

------
excitom
This is what Dell Computer was like in the early days. I worked there in the
late 80s. Tech support would try to solve any problem a customer had,
regardless of whether it had anything to do with the PC hardware. I think that
kind of service was a key to early success.

~~~
mgkimsal
Early stage companies do well to take this approach, because they can use the
input to inform future service/product enhancements knowing what works and
what doesn't.

Specifically with Dell, one of their big angles, IIRC, was custom built stuff.
While there wasn't an unlimited variation of possibilities, it was enough that
my Dell wasn't necessarily the same as your Dell - whether it was their
problem or not, many other vendors would punt on the support.

------
aylons
This deeply relates with the "Do things that don't scale" essay from PG.

[http://paulgraham.com/ds.html](http://paulgraham.com/ds.html)

As long as you can, do things that don't scale. Even if the end of this
history were different, the writer would have lost near to nothing, and
possibly gained some insight.

~~~
vacri
As someone who has been on night-shift on-call for end-user support while
working the day job at the same time, let me assure you that you don't lose
'near to nothing'.

Most of the comments in this thread assume that the cost of support is
trivial. It's not. Support is a product unto itself, and shouldn't be
trivialised into "come on, it doesn't take much!".

------
subhro
I have come across this kind of support numerous times from various companies
like Apple, NEC and Wacom. The result is, I firmly recommend them everytime I
have a chance and will continue to do them as long as they provide
transparency.

------
nutjob123
Old repost but a good one. Reminds us that every customer has a potential
story which can be pivotal to your business.

------
harrytuttle
Is Inc the new Medium?

These are all starting to look like SugarApe out of Nathan Barley.

