The $4 Million Complaint Call (2012)

The $4 Million Complaint Call (2012)(inc.com)

148 points by solaris152000 12 years ago | 32 comments

incision 12 years ago |

Nice story. I generally agree the message, particularly the concept and phrase of an "internal champion". As demonstrated that one person can make or break you.

I've witnessed similar situations play out more than once, but to the negative with bad service aimed at seemingly insignificant people killing six and seven figure orders.

That said, I think you're missing something if the potential windfall is your impetus for quality service.

"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him." —Malcolm S. Forbes [0]

0: http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/10/28/judge-character/

pbhjpbhj 12 years ago | |

Is it [largely] factual? I couldn't work it out quickly as it's told in first person but the tag line and mini-resume doesn't mention anything that suggests the writer writes radio broadcasting software.

The third para from the end suggests it's at least somewhat fictionalised.

+++

Oh, found this http://www.bsiusa.com/about/about.php (seems Burley didn't know much about trademarks when he set out?).

Edit: Also http://www.paulneevel.com/hp_archive/070830ronburley.html.

ColinWright 12 years ago |

If you value feedback from the HN collective then you probably should read the extensive discussion from the last time this was submitted:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4081390

There are many points and counter-points there, with more anecdotes, and some data.

Comments there are closed, of course, it being so old, so any new discussion will have to be here.

ChuckMcM 12 years ago | |

I suspect it is simpler, they don't care about HN's feedback.

A simple check of the account would suggest that they needed a bit of karma, their submission of the Hudsonreed site was DOA (as most, 'create an account, submit a site' type submissions are). They haven't made any comments to get karma that way, so they use the 'other' well known karma farming technique, scrape HN for past stories that were popular and re-submit them at the 'right' time. It has become enough of a signal that I suspect pg could add it into his heuristics for spammers.

solaris152000 12 years ago | | |

Actually someone at work shared it on Yammer and I thought people here might like it. I didn't realise Karma was of any value to be farmed. Sorry for... trying to share things?

MiguelHudnandez 12 years ago |

I like this story. I have provided this level of support in the past and it made me proud. But beware the lesson you learn from this "$4m call" story.

The lesson could easily be: I played the lotto and won big. Therefore, everyone should play the lotto.

aidos 12 years ago | |

Really? Going to extra mile to support your customers will give you a good reputation. It's nothing to do with playing the lottery. In this case it paid off in a big way. In the general case over the lifetime of your business it will almost certainly help you out somewhere.

I've just finished several freelance jobs where I've made sure to go above what was required. That's several people who will recommend me to others. That's not playing the lottery, it's just a sensible way of operating.

seldo 12 years ago | | |

But the alternative possibility, when running a retail business, is that you blow 90% of your time being extra-nice to existing customers and never get around to building the features that would have attracted new users. It depends what stage of growth your business is at; the bigger you get, the unpleasant reality is that the less important any individual customer becomes.

6d0debc071 12 years ago | | |

For a given level of service, customer support costs a certain amount C * scaling costs S your predict return on investment is R / probability P.

If C * S > R / P, then don't play.

It wouldn't make sense, for instance, for a company like Google to treat all its customers the same way that enterprise SaaS companies treat their more precious customers. S is too big for them. That level of service is manpower intensive.

On the other hand it's probably something you can afford to at the beginning, when you have few customers - an advantage of being a startup, (as I recall being told a few years back, 'You are your own slave labour.')

pbhjpbhj 12 years ago | | |

>That's several people who will recommend me to others. //

"Use this guy, you don't have to pay him for all the work."

mgaphysics 12 years ago |

Being a champion of world class service is always the goal and stories like this never get old. Keep in mind that there are also hidden/intangible costs associated with delivery of this level of service, for every "Bob the 4 million dollar client", there are 10 "John the 2 hour time-syncs". I am not saying that you should not strive for world-class service, because you should. I would speak more to pricing your services accordingly and not under valuing them to the point where you cannot take care of clients properly.

jacalata 12 years ago |

Kind of an entertaining coincidence that the other post from inc.com on the front page right now is called 'Never be a customers doormat'.[http://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/never-be-a-customers-doorm...]

chasing 12 years ago |

As noted in the other HN thread, this is a great example of taking time out to help a customer that's having a tough time and reaping a reward.

But.

While it can be great to have a general philosophy of "always provide the best customer service possible, even at 2am, no matter the customer," a great CEO will need to act based on the realities of their business situation -- informed by these philosophies, but not locked down by them.

I agree that in the context of business you should always be as nice as possible, no matter how difficult of a time you're having with someone. But some customers aren't the right customers for your business, and they should be guided elsewhere.

excitom 12 years ago |

This is what Dell Computer was like in the early days. I worked there in the late 80s. Tech support would try to solve any problem a customer had, regardless of whether it had anything to do with the PC hardware. I think that kind of service was a key to early success.

mgkimsal 12 years ago | |

Early stage companies do well to take this approach, because they can use the input to inform future service/product enhancements knowing what works and what doesn't.

Specifically with Dell, one of their big angles, IIRC, was custom built stuff. While there wasn't an unlimited variation of possibilities, it was enough that my Dell wasn't necessarily the same as your Dell - whether it was their problem or not, many other vendors would punt on the support.

aylons 12 years ago |

This deeply relates with the "Do things that don't scale" essay from PG.

http://paulgraham.com/ds.html

As long as you can, do things that don't scale. Even if the end of this history were different, the writer would have lost near to nothing, and possibly gained some insight.

vacri 12 years ago | |

As someone who has been on night-shift on-call for end-user support while working the day job at the same time, let me assure you that you don't lose 'near to nothing'.

Most of the comments in this thread assume that the cost of support is trivial. It's not. Support is a product unto itself, and shouldn't be trivialised into "come on, it doesn't take much!".

subhro 12 years ago |

I have come across this kind of support numerous times from various companies like Apple, NEC and Wacom. The result is, I firmly recommend them everytime I have a chance and will continue to do them as long as they provide transparency.

nutjob123 12 years ago |

Old repost but a good one. Reminds us that every customer has a potential story which can be pivotal to your business.

harrytuttle 12 years ago |

Is Inc the new Medium?

These are all starting to look like SugarApe out of Nathan Barley.