The Ups & Downs of a Successful Service

Not surprisingly, Six Apart is getting a lot of sunshine blown their way by the blogsphere for coming clean on what everyone has known all month, Typepad performance has really sucked.

I wonder though how long the "my bad" routine is going to work as a PR strategy. Let's face it, we all feel better when a service provider of any kind says "I'm sorry, we screwed up," but the admission itself is indeed hollow when not followed by "and here's what we have done to fix the problem and change our process so it won't happen again."

This reminds me of the story of the washing machine in our house about 2 years ago. My wife told me we needed a new washer/dryer, so I said the only thing I could say, "okay". She buys a Maytag Neptune matched pair, to which I said "gee, they seem kind of expensive," and she said "yeah, but they are the best."

13 months later, and I remember it specifically because it was 1 month out of warranty, the washing machine fails. Long story short, 6 weeks and 5 service visits later we still don't have a washing machine that works and I was told that the circuit board (the one they didn't replace) must be failed and it was going to take a month to get a new one. I lost it.

1. It's a fricking expensive washing machine to begin with, it shouldn't fail
2. I had 5 separate visits from service technicians, each one causing me to adjust my schedule accordingly, where the yo-yo tech would show up take a few screws out here and there and say he didn't have the part he needed.
3. there was apparently little communication between the service technicians because each time a different one would show up and not know what the previous yo-yo had done.
4. the dispatch center operates on that classic "they'll be there between noon and 5pm" window which of course means the service yo-yo would be there at 5 minutes to 5, if at all in one case.
5. despite the fact that one service technician told me that they were seeing a lot of failures in these circuit boards, nobody had thought to increase the order quantity for the replacement part. Coincidentally, a couple of months ago I received a notice of a class action lawsuit settlement that had to do with circuit board failures in the Neptune washer, so there was indeed an abnormal number of failures... contrary to their advertising for years, their repair people aren't that lonely.
6. finally, nobody at Maytag service was willing to take responsibility for how screwed up the situation had become and how poorly they had performed.

I called the CEO of Maytag, regional VP's, EVP Service, and down the list... I called every Maytag executive I could find (it's really amazing how easy it is to get phone numbers these days) and told them my story. A guy from the Office of the CEO called me back and finally I got the apology I was looking for... the satisfaction of it lasted about 5 seconds when I said to him "great, but when the hell are you going to fix my washing machine?" See what I mean, the apology was nice but I really just want my washing machine fixed.

What is it about saying "I'm sorry" that makes people all soft and mushy? Is the act of being confronted with someone taking responsibility so powerful that people are disarmed? Maybe, but I'm just not built that way I guess because when I hear someone say they are sorry I am just as quick to hammer back "good for you, but what are you going to do to fix it/this?"

When I asked the Maytag guy what they were going to do to fix my problem he had the right answer, he tasked a tech the next day, who drove 100 miles to get the circuit board, and fixed my washing machine. Good. When I asked him what they were going to do to fix the process that resulted in the fiasco he didn't have a good answer, he said he was going to look into it and that's just corporate-speak for "I'm going to put the file on my desk until it gets really really old and then I'm going to file it or throw it out." He did extend the warranty for 3 years but I responded that if it had another problem the only call I'd be making would be to BFI to have it picked up.

Typepad is having growing pains, that's a good problem to have. Six Apart is sorry that they are having these problems, but I'm still waiting for them to tell me what they are going to do to ensure that I don't regret the investment I have made in our relationship over the last 2 years. Seeing as how we are all into being transparent and operating out in the open, let's have a public discussion about the IT processes that led to them operating without adequate capacity and executing a flawed datacenter migration, and most importantly what they are going to do differently next time.

Some very experienced IT professionals are chiming in that they understand how difficult it is to run a datacenter (something I myself have not done I would add) and I am sure the empathy is well meaning. However, there are ample examples of large datacenter operations that operate with a very high degree of uptime and performance so while running a high capacity and complex datacenter may be difficult, it is being done successfully elseware.

Mena and Ben (further putting the human face on the company, a good PR tactic) may be plenty sorry, but I'm still stuck paying for shitty Typepad performance. In fact, I'd like to see this subscription software model go even further to align with customers by putting a service level agreement (SLA) in place that lays out a series of financial penalties the provider incurs when performance and availability fall below predefined thresholds. I bet they would not have to be sorry then, because companies that have these kinds of service level agreements are always highly motivated to get it right the first time.

UPDATE: The CEO of 6A sent out an email today detailing how they got into the jam they are in, what they are doing to fix it over the next 48 hours, and what they will be doing over the next 2 weeks to further improve the service. There was a lot of detail, one thing that was interesting is that it appears that they have to do a lot of code improvements as part of their 2 week program.

Link: Six Apart - Mena's Corner: The Ups & Downs of a Successful Service.

We apologize for the poor service you've experienced over the past couple of weeks, and also for the lack of official communication on Mena's Corner or Everything TypePad. At the same time, I know that an apology sounds hollow until we've fixed these issues and the service is stable once again.

We're going to do a better job of giving you updates on our status as we work to improve the service. Thank you for your loyalty, and we're working very hard to earn back your trust

Comments

[AC]

Why I do not gloat over Typepad's woes
http://www.johnkeegan.org/blog/_archives/2005/10/27/1324929.html

[Benedict]

Should've got a Miele. :)

[Scott Mace]

I had a Neptune that died in 2003 just after the warranty ran out. A friend of mine blogged his concern about his own Neptune and it led to one message with 88 comments:

http://blogs.msdn.com/johnmont/search.aspx?q=maytag&p=1

I then bought a Whirlpool and it's worked great from day one.

Scott Mace

[Donny Wong]

My experience so far with Maytag repair for my washer has been identical to yours. Lots of run-arounds and delays. So far, Maytag has screwed up a date (they confirmed a date verbally over the phone, and the proceeded to book me for a different date!), sent a wrong part to the tech, and caused me untold hours of lost time and productivity. It would have been worth my while to just buy a new machine rather than to get the old one fixed. I have complained to customer service, but have gotten zero satisfaction from them. No one seems to care!