An open letter to a Service Company (with thanks to +Seth Godin for his insightful comments on creative thinking)
"Dear CEO of a major service company I deal with.
Your company sent me an excited email yesterday.Did I want to keep track of my usage of your service, so that I can keep on top of the costs of that service? If so, then I could download your brand new 'App' (for the uninitiated, that is short for 'Application for a mobile internet-connected device, like a smart-phone'. For those who don't understand that sentence, this entire post may effectively be in Swahili)
Always one to want to keep a lid on costs, I signed up for the service and downloaded this free app.
Then I opened the app on my phone. Here is the message I received, right off the bat:
"A ... server request has failed, our App development team will look into the issue. Please try again at a later time."
No, dear CEO of the service company, I wont be trying again at a later time. I have tried four times for three days now. You told me this is an excellent product that would enhance my appreciation of your service. You have done the worst thing imaginable in service terms: told me I will benefit from something you have made just for me - something I didn't know before-hand that I wanted, but now do - only to let me down at the very first hurdle.
Dear company: never create a market niche that you immediately and completely fail to fill. It makes me feel disappointed, and you look very foolish. Instead, test your product, at least a bit. I don't mind if there are some teething issues: I get that new ideas can sometimes take time to perfect. But if the entire thing is a 'fail' from the beginning, that, dear sir, is a fail of epic proportions."
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