A tip for you: I work in support, and weasel words are the substance of our being. You tell the customer "Do A, B, and C, and that should get you up and running". They don't really hear the 'should', but it needs to be there because computers are fickle and anything can go wrong. In short, I guess I'm saying I'm a bit more practised at recognising weasel words for what they are - and in this situation, it's not really an "anything bad is possible from here"; the worst has happened. This is the point in support where you start giving the client the concrete steps that will be taken to solve their issue.
"again telling her" is the weasel words I'm referring to here. You've already told her this, and she claims that after saying this, all help evaporated - it's the cornerstone of her complaint, and you're announcing Round 2 of the same thing. This is a PR disaster for your company: it is not the time to engage in weasel words. Whether or not you plan on following through, you should sound like you absolutely will. Of course, you should follow through - if something like this happened in my company, the CEO would be absolutely roasting us for not following through and taking measures into his own hands, both because he's an honourable bloke, and because it's a giant PR issue.
jcunningham above points out other weaselly things. Again, whether or not you're giving her concrete messages about what kind of help you're offering her, you should also be announcing these publicly. "We are reimbursing costs of -foo-", "We are organising temporary accommodation of her own", "We are doing this and this to help the police", "We've assigned John Doe to manage her case and will be in contact this often". Be concrete, not hand-wavy.
The guy you're replying to gave five ideas for supporting her, and the response is a wishy-washy "we'll be there for her" - which is the kind of empty promise you hear drunk 20-year-olds tell each other before they sleep with each other's best friends. I don't necessarily think all the things the GP said are right, but using weasel words in this situation is a path to PR failure in my opinion.
EDIT: the reason why I wrote all the above is that I read your comment and felt angry because it sounded like another fobbing off, more promises that are not going to be upheld (as the first round was allegedly not). I do not think I'm going to be unusual in this.
Telling you're contacting her and AirBnb doubled customer staff won't just solve everything.
Always remember you're dealing with people, not just nicknames on internet (it's more than a series of tubes). Stop buzzwords and start acting like real people in real world.
I think you may have misparsed the sentence due to some ambiguity in the phrasing. The phrase "contacted again telling her" isn't meant to be read "contacted, again telling her"; it should be "contacted again, telling her". In other words, "again" refers to the contact, not to the telling.
partly, technically, yes. Remove the "again" from the quoted bit if you prefer. It is still Round 2 of saying "we'll be there for you", and Round 1 failed once they got what they came for.
No offense, but you need to stop with the Politically correct BS statements and just go ahead and do the right thing.If figuring out what the right thing is , is too hard, then maybe you guys have a much larger problem.
Like it or not, this may well turn out to be an inflection point for your entire business..its up to you to make it a turn for the better , not worse.
Agree, but perhaps without the "be a man" part. The offer to to do "anything we can" comes across as an offer to do what is asked, so a passive stance. "We're here to help" is not the same as "we're helping by doing this."
Here's my unsolicited advice: stop talking. You aren't going to win this by talking about it here of all places. Have a meeting today - all hands - and figure out what you are going to do. Don't invite your lawyer. Two agenda items: 1)how do we fix this for her? 2) how do we fix this problem with the model (insurance, renter background check)? Privately fix #1, publicly fix #2.
Don't talk publicly about what you are doing to help her until it is all done.
Do this right and your company is set. Do this wrong, and your company is dead.
What happened to paying her for damages? After the initial blog post, you said you'd do it. Then this post by her makes it clear that you didn't, and are not going to. So which one is it?
The fact that it takes her calling you out in front of what amounts to the entire tech community to get you to act is appalling and speaks very poorly about how you value your customers.
You've known about this for five weeks and the best you've come up with is to just stand by and wait?
"He then addressed his concerns about my blog post, and the potentially negative impact it could have on his company’s growth and current round of funding. During this call and in messages thereafter, he requested that I shut down the blog altogether or limit its access, and a few weeks later, suggested that I update the blog with a “twist" of good news so as to “complete[s] the story”."
Being a startup founder, I empathize with the difficulties AirBnB is facing with this crime of one of their customers. Being a potential AirBnB host, this makes me a bit nervous.
Being a concerned citizen, I don't care at all how such a crime impacts the company's profitability & image; all I care about is whether or not the company has the integrity to do the right thing.
For Pete's sake, compensate the woman for her loss already, and get a signed NDA in exchange. This is your chance to show (a) you're not evil, and (b) you can handle the situation.
I think the real problem is that too many people are all in on believing that the blogger's version of events are 100% accurate. Please note I am not saying she's lying, omitting or otherwise distorting the truth -- only providing her perspective on the relationship between herself and AirBnB. Just for the record, I also think AirBnB has utterly fumbled the ball here.
However, I don't think this type of tone is appropriate. If you review my comment history, I am firmly on the side of AirBnB sucking it up and making this right. Unfortunately, this is starting to smell like a witch hunt.
The best comment I heard on that slogan was from a businessman whose name I unfortunately forgot. It went along the lines of "The customer in not always right, that's nonsense. The customer does have a right to be heard."
"again telling her" is the weasel words I'm referring to here. You've already told her this, and she claims that after saying this, all help evaporated - it's the cornerstone of her complaint, and you're announcing Round 2 of the same thing. This is a PR disaster for your company: it is not the time to engage in weasel words. Whether or not you plan on following through, you should sound like you absolutely will. Of course, you should follow through - if something like this happened in my company, the CEO would be absolutely roasting us for not following through and taking measures into his own hands, both because he's an honourable bloke, and because it's a giant PR issue.
jcunningham above points out other weaselly things. Again, whether or not you're giving her concrete messages about what kind of help you're offering her, you should also be announcing these publicly. "We are reimbursing costs of -foo-", "We are organising temporary accommodation of her own", "We are doing this and this to help the police", "We've assigned John Doe to manage her case and will be in contact this often". Be concrete, not hand-wavy.
The guy you're replying to gave five ideas for supporting her, and the response is a wishy-washy "we'll be there for her" - which is the kind of empty promise you hear drunk 20-year-olds tell each other before they sleep with each other's best friends. I don't necessarily think all the things the GP said are right, but using weasel words in this situation is a path to PR failure in my opinion.
EDIT: the reason why I wrote all the above is that I read your comment and felt angry because it sounded like another fobbing off, more promises that are not going to be upheld (as the first round was allegedly not). I do not think I'm going to be unusual in this.