Oh man, I hope everyone reading this understands the consequence of putting a person who doesn't understand public relations or customer service, into a position such as customer service.
Could you elaborate a little on why Jules' blog post was bad?
It seemed completely straight-up. "X happened, Y happened, Z happened". Whether or not we agree with their decision, it seems like a good (for us) thing to hear the full sequence of events.
Elaboration: Jules demonstrates zero willingness to understand the customer's point of view. Even if your position cannot be compromised, as a CS rep you should never leave the customer with the impression that they were ignored, or worse.
First, the tone is so unbelievably petty, it's difficult to believe this company has ever made more than $50. I would conclude from this exchange that it's run by two high school kids in their parents' basement.
Second, the post is chock full of defensive half-truths, or as I call it: bullshit. For example:
We take privacy very seriously.
So seriously that we flip off anyone who sends a tweet about you and your account. It's not about privacy -- if it were, a simple statement to the effect of "we can't comment about accounts publicly" would have sufficed.
...to which we responded “Best of luck with your new host!”. This was not intended to be a taunt, this was intended to be the closing line to our discussion with them.
Who honestly believes this? "When I told him to 'get the fuck out of here', I only wanted to let him know that he was welcome to leave."
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This guy just does not get it. He must be an incredible sys admin, or it must be really hard to find a good one in Hampshire.
The truth -- as I see it -- is simply that this guy was irked by the thought of a customer posting annoying tweets about his company's policies, and he lost his cool. (If he ever knew to keep it in the first place.)
I deal with customer support on a daily basis. In my opinion it wasn't just the blog post that was bad. By then it was way too late.
The account auto-suspension may have been a bit harsh. But what they never should have done was explain it in public. The rest is just downhill from there.
Personally, I'd have responded to the friend's tweet with nothing more than, "Account questions should be directed to [email/url] where we can better assist." That way you take that stuff offline as soon as possible before it has a chance to foment into something nasty. And if it's really something private, there's nothing more you can say.
That aside, the tone in that blog post is all wrong. In paragraph one, "our side of the fence" draws lines and creates an adversarial tone right from the start. It's clear throughout that the author is taking this personally.
Paragraph two is mostly fine, but ends on a self-righteous semi-parenthetical, "We don't, for the record." As if they're going out of their way to be better than everyone else.
From paragraph three, the airing of dirty laundry begins. Beyond this, deleting 80–90% of the post would likely add to its value.
In paragraph five there's even some kind of victim mentality going on. They're being "baited" on Twitter, and "[attacked] for reasons unknown." The analysis is starting to get tedious.
All throughout, the message being communicated is: We did nothing wrong. It's defensive, and what facts are present play a secondary role to the message. Better to be proactive about the facts, leave out anything that hints of defensiveness, and just take your lumps.
Any time you're saying "what I intended," you've already lost.
But, again, a better blog post would not have needed to be written in the first place.
