

Postmates CEO tells customer to 'f--- off' - kevingibbon
http://www.torontosun.com/2013/09/16/postmates-ceo-tells-customer-to-f----off

======
andrewljohnson
I'm not going to excuse the faux pas, but customer service is a hard job. I
answered nearly all customer support for my company for years, until we
finally hired people to do it. The change in my mental health when this
happened was profound.

People are sometimes nice, but often irate, cruel, or upset. That wears on you
after a while, unless you are a total psychopath. I learned to cope by not
reading emails until I was in a good state of mind in the morning, where
before I would flip on my phone the moment I awoke. I can understand why the
Postmates CEO needs to blow off some steam, though an email to staff is of
course inappropriate. Save the user support gossip for office banter.

Thankfully, we haven't had any turnover in our support people (1 full-time and
1 part-time), but it's a job that is rife with it. It just wears you down
after a while. If you are doing support for your new start-up, give yourself a
break and manage your state of mind when you read support. And if you hire
people to do support, make sure you empathize with their position, encourage
them relentlessly, and tell them what bastards some users can be.

Sorry users, you are everything to me, but you get us down sometimes! We care
so much about the product and what people think of it, and the lowest trenches
for us are when we don't do a good job for someone, either in the software or
support.

~~~
joshwb84
Did you employ any other practical/teachable techniques to "manage your state
of mind"?

~~~
andrewljohnson
1) The one I mentioned (don't start out your day with support) is important.
Have breakfast first, drink your coffee, read Hacker News.

2) Take a break. We answer support even nights and weekends, and this is
important in connecting with users early on, but on nights when you aren't in
tip-top shape, just don't do it.

3) Complain to your co-workers. Venting helps.

4) Strenuous exercise really helps. Nothing like a 20 mile hike to clear your
mind.

5) Vacations without internet access.

And of course, make your product better! Fixing bugs is usually a better way
to stop complaints than adding features. People thanking you for your work is
a soothing balm, and you can eliminate a lot of harsh complaints. I'm not sure
how actionable the advice is, but hang in there and do good work, and ceterus
paribus, it will be a fulfilling existence.

------
yogo
Haha, it wasn't a joke. He said it under the assumption that in no way it
would be forwarded to the customer. Oooops. Employees are always saying stuff
like that, sort of a behind the scenes tough guy/gal thing, while smiling to
the customer. It's just a human way to deal with customer frustration I guess.

------
nlh
I think the worst part, actually, is that he tried to make the excuse that it
was a "joke". That comes across as disingenuous.

We all know it wasn't a joke (a joke = funny). But I don't think it was meant
to be literal either. It was a pretty clear instruction from the CEO to the
staff to basically tell the customer to go away. There's no reason for the CEO
to translate that message to his staff -- a good customer service person knows
exactly what that means:

CEO: "Tell him to fuck off"

Staff: "We are very sorry to hear about your problem, but I'm afraid at this
point there's nothing we're going to be able to do further to assist you. I
know this may be disappointing to you, but please understand that we receive a
lot of concerns and that after reviewing......." Etc etc.

The only issue here is that the internal message got out, which is indeed
embarrassing. The CEO's job was to make the final call on how to deal with the
customer, and good customer service sometimes means telling some customers to,
well, fuck off.

~~~
eli
I don't think it's a good idea to tell customers to "fuck off." Even behind
their back where they aren't meant to see it. Even just in your own head. It's
not a good attitude. That's just my two cents.

~~~
nlh
I agree in theory. But the fact is there are customers who are simply
irrational. They use your $5 product, make up an excuse to be unhappy, and
then demand $1000 in credit. They'll threaten you with "negative publicity" if
you don't give them exactly what they want, etc. etc.

Thankfully, these folks are few and far between, and I have no idea if this
person in the Postmates case was one of them (haven't seen the whole thread),
but the fact is you really do need to put your foot down as a business at some
point, and telling a customer to fuck off -- internally or otherwise -- is
necessary in some cases. Good customer service is one thing - letting
customers waste your time and bully you is another.

~~~
slantyyz
"Firing" a toxic or bad customer isn't the same as telling them to f-off.

------
jamesaguilar
Oh, come on. Who among us has not said something like this in private about
one of our customers? The only problem here is that it got leaked out.

~~~
slantyyz
I don't think I've thought this in over a decade. Early in my career, my
attitude might have been a little more confrontational.

Experience has given me thick skin and taught me not to take anything
personally. If a customer is toxic, then I just tell them to take their
business elsewhere. There's no need to lower yourself to a bad customer's
level by getting vulgar.

~~~
bradleyland
Well then you're better than some of us. Congrats.

I also occasionally leave the restroom without washing my hands if I'm in a
really big hurry too. Gross, I know, but I'm a flawed guy.

The only "excuse" Bastian has offered is context. He's taking full
responsibility though. I'm not sure what more he can do but wait for this to
blow over. It doesn't make him a bad CEO, it just means he got frustrated and
said something he shouldn't have.

------
huhtenberg
As embarrassing as it is, he didn't actually tell customer to fuck off.

Apparently some poor sod in support didn't trim internal exchange when using
last mail in the chain to reply to that lady.

------
ali-
His "apology": [http://blog.postmates.com/post/61340672198/a-message-to-
our-...](http://blog.postmates.com/post/61340672198/a-message-to-our-
customers-from-our-ceo)

Last night I sent a private e-mail to our Customer Service team in response to
a customer complaint regarding her past orders and restaurant profile. My
e-mail, which outlined how to resolve the customer issue, contained a bad joke
which was very poor in taste. Subsequently, the bad joke was sent to the
customer. What I said was a major lapse in judgement on my part. I deeply
regret this. I immediately reached out to the customer and offered my full and
sincere apology. I would like to extend that same apology to all of our
customers and Customer Service team. There is no excuse for this.

At Postmates we love and value our world-class Customer Service. We take great
pride in our Customer Service team. However, with my comment I have not lived
up to our own standards and also damaged my team’s reputation.

I cannot find the words to describe how much I value our customers and how
deeply I care about them being happy. There is no excuse for this type of
conduct.

I take full responsibility for my actions. I am sincerely sorry. Bastian
Lehmann

~~~
jon-wood
I'm not sure why you call this an "apology" in quotes. Seems like a textbook
accepting of responsibility to me.

~~~
Mithaldu
It is a very lacking apology because it contains no commitment to decreasing
the chances of this happening again.

~~~
GrinningFool
Not every failure needs a post-mortem. What do you want him to say: "We've
determined that all employees -- including me -- need to attend sensitivity
training to ensure that this does not happen again"? Or perhaps: "We will
install filtering software to catch this kind of message before it ever
reaches our customers in the future"?

No - it's not an operational failure to be picked at until a systemic solution
is arrived at, it's a human failure. _His_ failure specifically, and he
acknowledges this.

------
stephenaturner
I've done customer technical support both in person, over the phone, and via
email -- and yes, you get rough customers, rude customers and ridiculous
customers. But maybe I just take it better than most, because you can write of
the cranks and the fools easily, and you can empathise with everyone else
because they have real problems they want to solve.

And telling the customer to "f __* off "? Even as a joke, you just don't put
it out there... if you ever have to feel like that you make sure it's totally
private!

------
computer
This reminds me of a similar incident where a customer accidentally got a
similar message from the owners/management forwarded by customer support:
according to the message, he was a "freak and a very weird dude."

[http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/54/poker-beats-brags-
varia...](http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/54/poker-beats-brags-
variance/beat-am-freak-very-weird-dude-52809/)

------
mildtrepidation
I'd call the customer's response to his apology both classy and appropriate:
Yes, obviously he meant the sentiment behind it (in the way people often talk
about those they don't know personally or who aren't standing right in front
of them), but accepting the apology is a nice change from the normal "OMG
EVERYTHING IS A CRISIS THIS IS AWFUL" reaction we normally see from Problems
On the Internet.

------
esw
I'm just curious how this could even happen from a workflow perspective. A
customer service rep forwards an email to the CEO asking how to handle a
situation, the CEO says "Tell her to fuck off", and the rep... forwards the
message back to the customer?

~~~
jacalata
No, the customer emailed the CEO directly.
[https://twitter.com/Erin_Boudreau/status/379294594866741249](https://twitter.com/Erin_Boudreau/status/379294594866741249)

------
martinshen
It's weird to see this on the Toronto Sun. (hometown gossipy newspaper)

~~~
meritt
I'd never heard of postmates until now, so I think the strategy is working for
them very well.

~~~
ismaelc
Ditto. Looks like a cool app/service -
[http://postmates.com/app](http://postmates.com/app)

------
stephenaturner
And actually... this is pretty poor form from the customer support... poor
technical understanding to not delete the trailing email forwards if nothing
else!

------
danso
I don't know anything about Postmates or their CEO, or about the situation
beyond what was reported...but I could see how this was meant as a harmless,
internal quip that was meant to be ironically flippant. I can think of a few
situations where a customer or client has an incredibly important and entirely
reasonable need/complaint, such that it makes the company look sheepish for
not having thought of it, and saying something like: "Oh Christ, someone's
concerned about [our product/program/whatever] potentially burning their house
down. What a whiner!"...but in the "Oh-shit-this-is-so-serious-that-I-need-to-
lighten-up" tone of voice.

So I'm totally willing to accept that the CEO was being flippant here....the
problem is that you should never do it in email...or _anything_ written.
Things in writing have a permanency that long outlast their original
context...and that's even before someone selectively cherry picks from it.

~~~
kmlsvu
Couldn't agree more, it's a lesson that applies to almost anything in life,
don't put it in writing unless you want it to be seen by a wider audience than
the intended.

