Desperation rant…
There are good days and then there are really bad days. One of the downsides of all this “blog” exposure is that I probably get more crotch kicks and pot shots taken at me than anyone else I know. Usually they are personal and I just blow them off, but every now and then I go out and actively solicit them. At the end of the day, we try to do the best we possibly can and as with any other business we suck so much worse than any of you could even imagine. And thats why we work 24/7 here, to address the issues even you don’t know about. From time to time though, it makes sense to ask an open question just to make sure that our priorities on the problems we are aware of match up with the problems you (our partners, customers, etc) face with us. After all, you can’t build a long term business if all you ever consider is yourself and if all you can see is the road two weeks in advance.
Anyhow, yesterday I felt like a Microsoft Product Manager. The Windows 98 one. Remember last week when I asked about the documentation quandry? Well, one hundred pieces of feedback and counting, this one probably hurt the most:
“2. Service Status. I’ve logged a few support requests only to be told “We’re aware of the problem and are working on it” or “We’ve just updated the blog with this”. A single “Service Status” type of page which is updated regularly with support issues that affect more than one person, however big or small, may reduce the number of “Is it just me, or is it a system-wide issue?” type of requests I put in. I know I’m not alone in this as a number of us UK clients tend to contact each other to check Exchange Defender Service Status rather than contact you directly, for instance.”
Let me sum it up for you in case the large block of text was confusing: Our partners have formed a network to alert each other when we suck because we suck at communication so bad. That’s a new low.
The Problem
The problem with communication is that no two people like to receive their information the same way, in the same amount and with the same data attached to it. No matter what we do, we suck. There are people that want blogs and forums. Then there are people that only want an email for something critical, but they only have some clients that they consider critical and everything else is just a bother – so I’m left to be the psychic of what is an important issue and what is not. Then there are the people that want an email for everything – they are the boss of it all and they need to know when even the slightest, isolated issue is reported – so they sign up for every way we can issue an alert and they get overwhelmed and they ignore the alert stream completely. Then there are those that will open a support ticket even though the issue has been posted on the blog and on the support.ownwebnow.com announcement. And then there are those inconsiderate jerks that just like to ping me directly via email or MSN, thanks!
There is no way to address this problem, people are lazy, self-destructive and follow the path least of resistance. It is much easier to just pass the buck when it comes to support than to actually read the support notice. For jr. employees, it is much easier to just open up a support ticket and say “we’re waiting on the vendor for an answer” than to spend 3 seconds troubleshooting the issue. For business owners, it’s much easier to just subscribe to everything we publish (which is a mountain of crap to begin with) and then proceed to ignore it all than to just subscribe to the critical feeds and actually read them.
And don’t get me started on documentation. Nobody reads documentation. If its on the web, they ask for it in print. When its in print, they ask for the latest copy. When they have the latest copy, they don’t read it and instead ask questions and get offended when we cut and paste entire sections of it back into the email/ticket. They want collateral, but they want to brand every bit of it but they also want it to show all the enterprise grade stuff that is OWN property but without any of our trademarks or logos. What am I supposed to do, go out with a wagner and blow the friggin logo off a building?
I think what I’m trying to say is that there is no pleasing everyone and that every additional venue of information distribution only reaches a incrimental number of partners that is marginal, at best. With the effort to reach every possible partner that needs to be aware of what we are doing all we end up doing is further dilluting the information channel and overloading our base with information they would rather not read – to the point that they start ignoring us. (read: every newsletter every published, I get about a hundred a day).
Not The Solution
Because of the blue box above we had to rush and get something out today. The answer is this:
How is that different from www.ownwebnow.com/blog – well, its any and every little thing we are doing on our network, emergency and/or announced. It is intended to be the front line of all the OWN network operations activities, by product, streamed via RSS or emailed. Will it address any of the above? I can guarantee it won’t, people will still open tickets for the problems we’ve already talked about, they will be upset when we link to it and close the ticket and we’ll be wasting more time writing about the problems than working on solving them. I hated to rush this, but almost all the emails I got last week had requested this so I don’t see an alternative.
The solution is on its way though, in the meantime I hope this goes a little way towards helping…
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