As a startup founder, I've realized that people who send very angry missives are usually people who can be very strong advocates. Although it can be tough to bite my tongue and not respond sharply to someone who sends a profanity-laced email, it's definitely the right thing to do.
Nearly everyone who curses in their first email will apologize upon receiving an email from the founder. They were probably just having a bad day and assumed that $Company was some corporate powerhouse trying to nickel and dime their customers.
There's about 5% of people who persist in nastiness.
But almost everyone ends up being happy about the interaction, many end up renewing their subscriptions, and some will even email other companies asking them to integrate our technology. Sometimes the root of the frustration was that our service didn't work better with other platforms, which is something we can't control on our own.
So having these very excitable folks sending emails on our behalf can be a powerful thing. It just requires biting your tongue instead of replying in the heat of the moment!
I can echo this. I run a smallish app with a decent following, and once in a while I'll get a "Your worthless app lost all my data, @#$% you!" email. A simple, "Hey, sorry to hear your having problems...tell me what's going on" does wonders.
I try to remember this when I interact with people in any medium (including in-person). Snark/anger/sarcasm are often just the envelope for the content of a message. If you don't let it affect you, you can respond to the content of the message, not the delivery, and break down a number of walls instantly. And as a bonus you're not giving someone else control over your emotional state.
That said, some people are just abusive idiots and you kind of have to have a sense for when you're wasting your energy.
Having worked in a few startups and waited tables, I'm confident the angry tech customers are not the same people who are demanding in a restaurant. It sounds similar but you're talking about entirely different people.
The angry tech customer generally cares about a problem they're trying to solve. The demanding restaurant patron is focused on the feeling of exercising power over someone subservient to them.
Any overlap between those groups of people is random.
> There's about 5% of people who persist in nastiness.
The thing with real stores is that all the assholes are from this group. The ones that are having a bad day may react badly to something, but do not go out of their way to create problems.
What means that real stores have many fewer problem customers. But they can't count on them changing either.
Yeah, change is harder when the timeframe is limited. I can reply to an email a couple hours later, when someone might be in a different mood. In a store, there's much less time for a change of attitude.
Yeah, the population of angry people that public-facing workers have to deal with is different than the group who writes angry emails that reach the founder. Immediate reactionary anger vs focused and articulated anger.
There is quite a bit of difference between someone caring about what is, to them, a significant inconvenience, which is I think what you are describing with those who send angry missives about services, and those who nitpick everything constantly, in many small complaints, like the overly needy customer in a services industry.
The angry message to a tech service provider can often be a last ditch attempt at resolution. An angry review of a restaurant is usually little more than a public “fuck you”: they aren't getting further business from that customer.
Nearly everyone who curses in their first email will apologize upon receiving an email from the founder. They were probably just having a bad day and assumed that $Company was some corporate powerhouse trying to nickel and dime their customers.
There's about 5% of people who persist in nastiness.
But almost everyone ends up being happy about the interaction, many end up renewing their subscriptions, and some will even email other companies asking them to integrate our technology. Sometimes the root of the frustration was that our service didn't work better with other platforms, which is something we can't control on our own.
So having these very excitable folks sending emails on our behalf can be a powerful thing. It just requires biting your tongue instead of replying in the heat of the moment!