Tom Raftery’s complaints fall on deaf ears
This is a post I’ve been meaning to write for sometime. Thanks to a recent post by Tom Raftery, I’ve been prompted to write sooner rather than later. I’m also going to comment on some of the commentators of Tom’s post, including Damien Mulley, organiser of the Irish Blog Awards. I feel strongly about some of the opinions expressed by some of the commentators so I’ll put my thoughts about them in a follow up post. So, call this 1 of 2. The second won’t be as long!
[Update 21/1/7 - I've decided not to write a second post about this as there's no point in prolonging the debate.]
Ok, this is what prompted me to spend the best part of the last hour on this post. Tom Raftery, a respectable blogger and podcaster thinks you should air your complaints in a public forum. I agree. Isn’t that the whole point of a blog? That is, open, honest and transparent?
Well, some disagree with Tom (and I), as articulated by some of the commentators on Tom’s blog.
Most bloggers will know who Tom is but not all of our readers have blogs (yet). So for those of you who don’t know who he is, you’ll probably remember when O’Reilly publishers presented a cease and desist to a conference for using the term “Web 2.0â€? Well, that was the IT Cork conference that Tom helps to organise, ironic because Tim O’Reily is a Cork man himself.
To set the scene I’ve copied below, the most important aspects of the dialog that took place between Tom and a hosting provider Blacknight. Apparently, Blacknight experienced some technical difficulty which saw the loss of Tom’s data on one of their servers. This troubled Tom, but it wasn’t his motivation for blogging his disappointment.
It was Blacknight’s handling of the matter that annoyed Tom most. Instead of apologising to Tom and reassuring him that it wouldn’t happen again, they acted like Teflon robots by absolving themselves of any kind of responsibility (from what I’ve read and what I’ve been told by Tom on Skype). After learning of Tom’s original post highlighting their poor support, Blacknight asked him to remove all of his data, as they no longer wanted him as a customer. Wow, if that doesn’t scare off existing and potential customers, nothing will.
If this is the type of response we can expect from brand owners, I’m sure it’ll do little to please mainstream bloggers.
A snippet from Tom’s post
Blacknight Solutions contacted me this afternoon and asked me to move all my sites off their servers. They no longer want my business. Why? Because I criticised their customer service after they lost all my podcasts, didn’t tell me about it until I discovered it a couple of weeks later, and when I did report it to them, they blamed me for asking for a temporary home for my podcasts (untrue).
Now, the technical screw up shouldn’t take the limelight so let’s put that aside, even if they did manage to delete Tom’s podcast with Sam Sethi (hehe Sam isn’t having much luck with deletions lately!). At least they didn’t delete the interview he did with me 
I’m very interested in exploring Blacknight’s response to the situation. I think it demonstrates how Europeans don’t fully appreciate the power of the blog as a weapon in the marketing armoury, at least not as much as they do in the US. As the saying goes, ‘when America sneezes we’ll catch a cold the following week’.
My personal opinion was strengthened recently during an interview I did with a journalist from the Sunday Tribune. During the interview the lovely lady asked the question that many are trying to answer, ‘where’s the money from blogs?’ My answer is simple; it’s not about money blogs make from advertising. It’s about the return you get on brand awareness through interacting with the consumer and showing that you care about what they think. This can be a brand engaging with the blogsphere/consumer, or it can be a blogger demonstrating their skills and experience to people who are likely to employ them.
I believe we now live in a world of ‘permanent beta’. That is, our products and services are under constant development based on customer feedback. This is exactly why the entire Segala corporate site is moving to WordPress.
Proof that blogs can make a difference
I posted a comment to support Tom on his post during which I highlighted the poor customer service Segala experienced with Hosting365 and Irish Broadband. Within 12 hours, Ed Byrne, Marketing Director from Hosting 365 emailed me. See below.
Hi Paul,
I read your comment on Tom Raftery’s blog about Hosting365′s service.
First of all I am very sorry you have that opinion of us. 2005 was a tough year for Hosting365 – we’ll be putting up a long blog post about that soon – we went from 16 to over 30 staff and built 2 new support teams. I hope that customers now start seeing positive results from this.
I’m not going to try and pretend we had a perfect customer experience in 2005 – we didn’t – and we’re working to build back customer trust and deliver BETTER support – as we see it as our core driver of growth. All I would say is that if you are moving to Rackspace, you are clearly getting a dedicated server – you are currently on shared hosting, which is a massive step down from dedicated, and receives different SLA’s and support lines. Of course the cost reflects this.
Regardless of whether the deal is done, or sites already moved, I would like to extend an invitation for you to come in and have a quick chat – show you around the facility. For our business – any business – reputation is absolutely key, so I’d really like to show you the investment we’ve made and get feedback as a customer, on what we should be focussing on.
Ok, so we had a poor experience with their customer and technical support teams. But here’s a marketer who is clearly switched on and someone I now have a lot of time for. Most of Segala’s data has already migrated to Rackspace, but the current site is still with Hosting 365. I’m so impressed by Ed’s (Hosting 365) response that I’m prepared to retain their service for some of our data, on the premise that their customer support team listen as well as their marketing colleagues and react just as quick.
Nobody is perfect and we all make mistakes. So, why not explain yourself and try to put it right as Hosting 365 demonstrates. I wonder if Irish Broadband will get in touch. I doubt it very much considering the amount of times I offered to fly to Dublin (from the UK) specifically to discuss our relationship with a member of its management team. They don’t even bother to return our calls.
Rackspace charge a deposit when they’re unable to perform credit checks on companies outside the UK. When I heard this I instructed my team to look elsewhere. Within an hour, Rackspace called back to say that after a little research, they realised our affiliations was enough. Another good example of a company that goes out of their way.
Back to the positive side. Tom’s post
This is a brilliant example of a blog post making a real difference.
My conclusion
Brand owners, please take the blogsphere very seriously and engage with it now. You can do this through your own blog and/or through mainstream and respectable bloggers. Consumers will blog (and probably are right now) about your brand whether you like it or not, so its wise to engage and at the very least, gain respect for showing that you care.
Bloggers, please take a leaf out of Tom’s book and be open and honest. You might not make friends with everyone, but you’ll certainly have their respect and sometimes, admiration.
FYI Tom didn’t just blog his experience, he first tried to resolve it with the supplier.
9 Responses to “Tom Raftery’s complaints fall on deaf ears”
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Hi Paul,
I presume before making this post you called Blacknight as you did Tom to discuss this so that this blog posting would be “fair and open” like you suggest that all bloggers should do? If not, then your post is one sided. With any situation there are two sides and without comment from the second party your are just jumping on Tom’s “band wagon”.
Hi Paul,
Thanks for the kind words. It’s always hard to read negative comments in a public forum about your company, and hard not to go on the defensive.
I think one thing I’ve learnt through our support issues – is that generally people don’t get annoyed when there is a problem – we all know problems happen – it’s setting the expectation on what service levels should be, and then delivering on them. Over-selling or over-promising will come back to haunt you.
The other point I’d like to highlight is that a marketing budget shouldn’t only be broken into advertising / event sponsorship and the usual brand building and customer acquisition areas – but also have a major part apportioned to ‘delighting the customer’ – which can’t be bought by media spending, but only by internal management, training and processes, that are customer- and service- centric. When you have thousands of customers you’re going to get compliants – people have off days, on both sides of the fence – it’s how you deal with it that sets you apart.
Paul,
Quite a considered post on the situation. I do believe that while Michele should respect the power of the blogosphere, Tom should use carefully the power he has through his readership. After all , Tom works as a consultant to business and has his own reputation to manage.
Paul , Technology in Plain English
Paul,
I appreciate your direct approach. I can’t debate your opinion regarding my commenting from one side of the fence. I am in fact, voicing my personal opinion as someone who knows Tom and believes what he says to be true. I am not claiming to know the full story, only Tom’s version and I make no bones about that.
I didn’t call Tom specifically to get his side of the story, we needed to catch up about something entirely different and got talking…
I would like to invite Blacknight to comment if they wish to explain their side of the story for the sake of the record.
Sometimes we need to trust what people say. There are commentators on Tom’s blog who support Blacknight because they’ve had a positive experience. I wouldn’t even begin to debate their points as I assume they’re true. I do apologise if my post misrepresented my intentions.
I don’t know Blacknight. I am simply commentating on a very specific point which was surrounding their decision to react badly to a blog. This is a mistake made by many brand owners and one I was hoping to highlight using Tom’s experience as an example.
If you look at Ed from Hosting 365, he got in touch with me personally. Given my original harsh words, most people would have ignored my post, or reacted as Blacknight did. So, not only has he been given the opportunity to address my original comment, I will only speak of his company in a positive light and reference its reaction to a complaint. I might even offer him a job!
Money can’t buy that kind of PR.
Ed – I can only applaud your decision to take negative feedback from a customer and turn it into a very positive situation using the newest of tools available to a marketer.
Paul – it was given less consideration for Tom’s post than you think. As I said, it’s a post I’ve been meaning to write but never got around to (like most things right now!). I thought Tom’s post was the perfect opportunity to give an example of a brand not addressing a blog. Whether or not the points expressed on that blog are true is almost irrelevant as I think the brand should engage anyway, even if only for the sake of the record.
Regarding your point on Tom’s reputation.
I think people respect him for his approach, so he must be doing something right. I don’t think enough people speak their mind. Mike Arrington will happily give his verdict on companies which can in some cases, make or break those companies. I think the public will decide on whether to believe Tom or Mike when they express an opinion.
Off topic, why don’t you drop by http://contentlabel.org and see if it’s of interest to you. I’d love to get as many people as possible involved, especially those that like to express an opinion
Ok to be upfront, Paul and I work together so we tend not to comment on each others posts unless for the fun of it…
I had a recent experience with a bank security guard. I parked in the customer car park as I was withdrawing a large amount of cash. These days you’d never know whose watching you.
Anyway, as I’m leaving with two young children in my car he started roaring and shouting in the driver side window, writing my car registration number and stating he was calling the Garda. My kids thought we were getting arrested. He really upset them. I drove off rather than get out of the car.
When I got home I called the bank manager to make a complaint. I wasn’t the first to complain. Besides doing himself out of a job, that’s no way to speak to customers especially in front of kids. Luckily the branch manager understood this which made me (the customer) feel a little better.
Without the customer you have no business, it doesn’t take a lot to listen. Sometimes that’s enough
Thanks for the support Paul.
Ok there is lot’s of Paul in this comments, Part from Paul Walsh.
Paul-Blacknight
You said Walsh is talking one sided, as his opinion supporting Tom. So why didn’t you guys let your side of the story out, and come clean? We are not bunch of losers that we won’t understand server side technical issue. We know tom’s side as he expressed it, so why not you guys express too. So we won’t talk only about side of tom. Consumer left you negative feedback and you send a notice removing site, well that doesn’t sound too transparent, does it?
Ed Byrne
I may never had experiance hosting with you but i really like your initiative of responding negative comments. Consumer always right, even if they aren’t. If they don’t like you, you won’t have biz. Every companies have draw backs, but still people lure into some just for one and only reason Customer care.
[...] Now, instead of attacking Paul, or throwing him off their servers, Ed contacted Paul privately by email and said: I read your comment on Tom Raftery’s blog about Hosting365’s service. [...]