

A Message To our Customers from our CEO - protomyth
http://blog.postmates.com/post/61340672198/a-message-to-our-customers-from-our-ceo

======
tlb
Have you been in a chain grocery store and seen a store executive in suit
discussing shelf placement with a supplier? They'll always take time to say
hello to customers and be super-helpful and friendly. That's how good customer
service attitude is propagated down from the top. When the boss disrespects
customers in front of his team, that sets the upper limit for how well
customers will be treated by the company.

As a CEO, if a customer can't be satisfied with your current offerings, you
should sympathize with their frustration and wish them the best. And thank
them for caring enough to try your service at all.

~~~
derefr
So, how does this square with the "fire your customers" dictum that seems to
be pretty common in SV?

~~~
larrik
You fire them by telling them you unfortunately can't meet their needs at this
time, not by telling them to F off.

~~~
gojomo
Right. But "tell them to fuck off" is just an emotionally-charged, internal
shorthand for "their demands are unreasonable, so using the normal niceties
let them know we can't provide what's been requested".

Anyone so literal-minded to think such hyperbole is a actual request to tell a
customer to "fuck off" is not qualified to be either a CEO _or_ a Customer
Support Representative.

~~~
larrik
True, but a CEO should know not to send anything in poor taste in email at
all. Stuff like this can happen, and not always by accident.

~~~
gojomo
CEOs are people with frustrations and lapses too.

And some high-functioning teams use extremely ribald language internally.
Composing every internal message to a "what if this become public?" standard
is the _safest_ policy, but imposes such costs on clarity/motivation/speed
that it might not be the _optimal_ policy.

~~~
protomyth
Using "ribald language internally" might be ok until you get into your first
lawsuit with discovery. It does tend to rub a jury a bit wrong.

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nilkn
Without seeing both sides, all I can really say is that whoever forwarded this
to the customer is the one who unambiguously messed up here. The CEO of a
company is allowed to get frustrated, in general, and he clearly didn't intend
this to reach the customer. Whether his frustration was justified is really
another question which can't be answered without more information.

~~~
JunkDNA
The person who forwarded it to the customer clearly messed up, but (to
paraphrase Steve Jobs) somewhere between the janitor and the CEO, reasons for
screwups stop mattering. In general, you should always write email assuming
that everyone will read it. Email has a way of being forwarded and re-
forwarded. All of us forget this from time to time. As a CEO though, you can't
really afford the luxury of forgetting. A CEO's emails are _ripe_ for finding
their way to other people in the company, journalists, investors, etc...

~~~
tripzilch
It reminds me a lot of learning why it's a good idea to not use profanity in
code comments, even if you're _pretty_ sure it'll never end up in production
code.

The basic idea is, even if it'll never end up in production code, if you're in
the habit of writing profanity in comments, odds are, over enough time, at
some point that code _will_ be seen by someone you'd rather not have to see
it.

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TheBiv
This feels like TMZ. Other than critiquing and learning from the things he
says in response to it, I see very little value in this. I also don't like
fun; so there's that! :)

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kevingibbon
original tweet
[https://twitter.com/Erin_Boudreau/status/379294594866741249](https://twitter.com/Erin_Boudreau/status/379294594866741249)

~~~
thezilch
Looks more like a pitchfork mob, to me; the guy can't even apologize for a
misstep. I bet none of these people have ever said anything bad about another,
in a private place! It shouldn't really matter if they are customers or not.

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Shinkei
So... are we going to hear the other side of this? I mean, sometimes the
'customer is not always right' and I think it's fair to assume he is mostly
sorry only because he got caught. But I want to know what the issue was that
prompted such a forceful reply.

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tlogan
Some customers are just ... not customers but pathological users. With "f---
off" he probably meant: issue the refund, delete account, and deeply
apologize.

~~~
smacktoward
Or he meant, you know, "f--- off."

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jamieomatthews
I assume the customer service rep that responded to this got fired? Yes, its
unacceptable for the CEO to say something like this, but its a customer
service reps JOB to ALWAYS respond calmly and friendly to customers.

If they really thought he wanted that message forwarded on to the customer,
they need to find a new line of work

------
ianstallings
I might be in the minority but I'd rather hear "go fuck yourself" than
insincere statements about how much they care while basically telling me to go
fuck myself. It's right up there with the "it was my pleasure" reply from
customer service. You derive _pleasure_ from helping me? Well in that case
come on over to my house and I'll give you an orgasm of work to do.

------
300bps
Two weeks ago my wife and I were at a comedy club. We paid an extra $7 for
reserved seating - meaning nobody would be sitting at our table. Next to our
table was another couple that paid for reserved seating. Note that when I say
"reserved table" you should know that the tables are practically touching each
other and the room is wall-to-wall people.

Somehow this other couple with a reserved table ends up with two dudes being
sat at their table. They're actually closer to me than the other couple
though. The woman from the couple got up three times to complain to the
manager. She literally missed half the show. Finally the manager comes up to
me, hands me two free tickets for a future show and asks if I would mind if
the two dudes sat at our table. I said no problem. Ironically, the dudes were
further away from us at our table and closer to the lady complaining about
them sitting at our table.

Some people are just so unbelievably difficult to deal with and are
unsatisfied with anything to the point they will cut off their nose to spite
their face. I don't know anything about this situation but I've seen so many
customers deserve to be told to fuck off that I'm not surprised if one got
told that.

------
taurussai
Wow! If I understand this correctly, he asked customer service to write this
response?

~~~
meritt
Clearly it was sarcastic. Someone just, intentionally or otherwise, forwarded
it to the customer too.

