Anyway, point is, I feel for you, jdw. These are strange times to be in any kind of public-facing customer service role.
]]>> outstanding documentation
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> website design
๐คจ
> valuable services you provide
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]]>It’s on my bucket list. -jdw
]]>Also I thought this (and now you have to as well) when you said this:
“Do note that people whoโve intentionally been making our lives difficult have historically greatly overestimated the dismay the prospect of their departure would elicit”
Dickhead: You just lost yourself a customer!
jdw: I forced myself to what?
Dickhead (surrounded by people holding handfuls of cash): YOU JUST LOST YOURSELF A CUSTOMER
(a la The Simpsons 8F08 “Flaming Moe’s”)
]]>Carrier pigeons at the ready as always ๐
J
It’s really not about abuse. If you abuse me, I don’t much care unless it goes on long enough to get tedious. If you abuse anybody else, there’s no fee. I may warn you once if it’s especially mild but usually I’ll terminate you on the spot. This policy about time. Our time has value; this policy defends us against efforts to waste it.
I don’t want to say it’s impossible to get this policy invoked (solely) by posting on the forums. Someone will eventually find a way to prove me wrong. Sure, people sometimes do get snippy there. (Though I admit I don’t always de-escalate, and can’t blame anyone but myself for that!) But posting on the forums is what we want people to do. People who do are still talking and (usually) listening. There’s hope. This policy is more for the sort of person who refuses to post to the forums. Which is a position you may find hard to understand. I certainly do.
Email: The whirligig on my site is broken.
Our auto-reply: We do not provide email support. If you don’t have a subscription membership, you can ask your question for free on our forum.
Email: What? This is a serious problem! Fix it! Now!
Our auto-reply: We do not provide email support. If you don’t have a subscription membership, you can ask your question for free on our forum.
Email: I can’t believe you’re trying to blackmail me into paying for support to fix your own broken shit! You’re disgusting!
Our auto-reply: We do not provide email support. If you don’t have a subscription membership, you can ask your question for free on our forum.
Email: I WILL DESTROY YOU!!
PayPal: Your customer has opened a “Goods not received” dispute…
Under this policy, we’re going to beat that dispute, charge them $50 for the hassle, convert them to a subscription membership, and let them know that their whirligig is broken because they clicked “Disable DNS” last week. (Or whatever.) Then the person will either ragequit or continue on as a subscription member able to get the sort of help they need in the future. Either way works for us.
I ought to probably add that if it really had been our problem, they still would have received the first auto-reply, but we would have fixed it. If our stuff really is broken, we don’t care if you tell us by email, forum, carrier pigeon or smoke signal.
These cases require that the problem be on their end, that they ignore the directions we give them to get help, and that they do something to hassle, harass, or burden us instead.
-jdw
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