Information Technology Dark Side

Yesterday I had an irritating incident with ZenDesk, the SaaS provider of the help desk used at Collaborative Software Initiative (where I work) and TroopTrack.com (a hobby project of mine). I asked for a new feature in the public forums and got this terse reply from Jake Holman at ZenDesk:

Automations are for batch administrative ticket operations or notifications – they are not for adding comments. Rules will generally never add a comment to a ticket, and we intend to keep it that way.

This response kind of pissed me off, but mostly it left me bemused. I’m supposed to “love my help desk” – that’s the big idea behind ZenDesk the product. Shouldn’t I also love THEIR help desk?

I thought about this for a while and solicited the response of others. They were a bit dumb-founded as well. “This is support?” we asked. I also considered the fact that ZenDesk, like TroopTrack, is modeled somewhat after 37Signals, and that part of their product philosophy was probably about making their product better by doing less.

I also considered the difficulty of telling a customer no. Sometimes, there is just no good way to do it. It’s even more complicated when you don’t know the customer from Adam, as is often the case with a SaaS product. Maybe I would have been irked no matter what Jake said.

In the end, I decided I needed two things: 1) A better explanation of why my request was rejected 2) A friendlier exchange with my help desk’s help desk. So I asked for it, and I was careful to let my irritation come through (I’m not a fan of pretending everything’s okay when it’s not). Here’s what I said:

When I read about 37 signals telling customers no, I think “what a brilliant idea.” When I experience it firsthand, it stings a little. Would you condescend to explain the philosophy behind automations a little bit for a person who isn’t part of your product team? Specifically, I’d like to understand what values you (ZenDesk) have that prescribe that approach.

Much appreciated.

“Love your help desk”

Dave

The sarcasm isn’t masked, but I also don’t rail on the dude – I simply explain what I want.

It didn’t take long for Jake to respond, and frankly speaking his response left me completely mollified. I won’t bore you with all the details, but here’s the gist of it:

Of course, I’d love to – sometimes people just don’t want to hear me talk about helpdesk geek waffles though, hence I try and keep responses short

There’s a number of philosophies within Zendesk that need to be explained first, so I’ll go through each of them as quickly as I can.

…

For these reasons, we don’t allow Computers’ to make comments in a Human’s conversation.

Hope that clears things up!

Here’s what Jake did that I thought was very smart and left me loving my help desk’s help desk again:

• He recognized a fellow geek and used appropriate geek-speak to acknowledge that I was ticked (emoticons are lame but they totally work)
• He explained why he was terse without an embarrassing apology or even a hint of arrogance
• He gave a patient and defensible explanation of why I had asked for something that didn’t fit in the product vision

I think this is a great example of how to make an unhappy customer happy again. As a fellow provider of customer support, I learned from this exchange. Making customers angry is an inevitable part of providing support. Turning a frustrating customer exchange into a positive experience is an art form that few are good at.

Thanks Jake, for being good at it, and thanks ZenDesk, for being awersome.

Stumble it!