Is this the most condescending customer support ever experienced by mankind?

[helloworld15]

Here's the exchange (anonymised as I'm not into public shaming): http://pastebin.com/grbfp3Kv

I'm sincerely interested in knowing what people's opinion on this exchange is. I felt condescended and disrespected from answer 1 all the way to the end. I may have overreacted but I was honestly blown away by how unhelpful and condescending this person was.

Thoughts?

--

UPDATE: thanks for all the answers so far. It's really helping balance my position in all this. I still feel like I'm the one who's right in the exchange but given how many pointed out I was too aggressive from the get go there has to be something there too.

I just feel like pointing out that a straight no (a.k.a. door shut in your face) on such a basic request is terrible and disappointing in 2015 isn't disrespectful enough to warrant the flood of condescension that came my way. I definitely escalated it after that, but I feel it was somehow warranted.

To those who ask that I name the company: please realise I only posted this here to get people's 2 cents on an exchange, not to publicly shame a company or an individual. There's already too much of that online and things like that have been known to have dire consequences for parties involved.

This is not my goal nor my motivation in posting this there.

[mod]

I thought you sounded like a jackass, and started it with "TERRIBLE."

The other guy was pedantic and sort-of sounded like an ass near the end. He took things a bit personally, maybe having a bad day or something.

He seems a little baffled about why you're angry that you got a "straight no" when that's the answer to your question.

I wouldn't have submitted to having an argument with you, but I'm not surprised he did. I don't think it's particularly awful in any sense. He was just too lengthy--he should have just said (in his 2nd email) something like "Sorry, but our setup does not include permanent URLs. It's part of the security policy our company has decided on. Let me know if I can help in some other way."

I don't get the impression you'd have been satisfied with that, either.

[helloworld15]

I admit getting a straight no without any follow up as to how we could figure it out rubbed me the wrong way as that's not what a customer support rep should do.

When I got condescension on top of that I lost it.

If not letting a smartass condescend me all the way to home makes me a jackass, I'm happy to be one.

The rep could have simply explained their stance without the smartassery and I would have frowned, said thanks and moved on.

[ramblerman]

If your ego was just a tad more in check, your correspondence with customer support might have been far shorter and you would have saved us all this ridiculous thread.

[helloworld15]

This is what I don't get. People seem to genuinely think ego was involved. I was just blown away by how clueless the rep seemed (at first at least) about what I was asking. The condescension did the rest and I lost it.

[DanBC]

Multiple people have said the problem is with you, not with the support person.

Doesn't that at least make you pause to reconsider whether you're right or not?

[helloworld15]

It does, but multiple people also stated that the rep was clearly untrained in customer service matters, some agreed saying a straight now without trying to help isn't the right thing to do. After all the comments I do feel like I was 100% wrong with the tone and volume I chose. I just felt incredibly frustrated at the complete lack of interest in trying to help out.

[mod]

I think your very first response exhibits that you were looking to have a spat with the support rep.

Most level-headed people would have thanked the rep, or said "That's unfortunate--I really would like to see a way I can script the install of this on new machines."

Again here--I don't think the rep seemed clueless at all. He exhibited a pretty in-depth knowledge about your topic of discussion. I think his point was "I wasn't trying to guess what you were really asking," and your point was "you should have guessed what I was really asking."

[helloworld15]

He proved he wasn't clueless a few answers in the thread. But by that point that fact possibly bothered me even more. It was as if he was trying his best to be smoky and withholding information that could have proven to be relevant (hence the smartass comment I made. That's exactly the opposite of what a rep should do, i.e. trying to figure out how to help out.

[88e282102ae2e5b]

The customer service rep seemed perfectly polite. Both in the conversation that you posted, and in your update here, you come off as a complete narcissist.

It's not even valid to decide whether you're "right" or not - the company doesn't exist to benefit you and you alone - it exists to benefit as many customers as possible. If most of the other customers are demanding some other feature, they have to dedicate their resources to that thing first. They might not even be trying to capture the segment of the market that would want an API.

[helloworld15]

Customer service exists to help customers. At no point in the conversation I felt like the rep was making any effort to understand why I even opened a ticket with them.

Given the kind of products they sell I'd be surprised if requests like mine weren't surging.

I posted this here to figure out if my impression of the conversation was too biased, and it turns out that's actually the case. I guess in your book that's as self absorbed as it gets.

[mtmail]

The first response was basically "no, we don't have that feature", which I think is an acceptable answer. If other providers have that feature, then you're free to use them. A company doesn't have to implement any feature users ask for.

If you want me to be an independent judge, then the customer is the pushy and somewhat insulting one. For my product I would have (maybe) given you money back and wished you a good day. Any further discussion with the customer would have been wasted time.

[helloworld151]

I'll stipulate that I might have phrased things in a somewhat aggressive way, but if you exclude the rest of the conversation all I pointed out was that in 2015 having your customers download code from your website and not offering tools to work with is terrible. I do stand behind that statement and as proof of that ALL the other providers had a solution for this as people do expect this kind of feature in 2015.

But yes, reading it now I could have beaten around the bush around more and I could have been more reasonable.

Things went south when the condescension started.

[gus_massa]

CUSTOMER > Your insularity and lack of touch with the developers community, not to mention your complete lack of manners, lost you a customer today.

I think that the previous email from SUPPORT was polite and this reply looks unnecessary aggressive for me. Perhaps the COMPANY doesn't have a real reason not to provide the link you wanted, but they can choose to do in their way. Vote with your wallet.

[helloworld151]

Vote with my vallet indeed, I was planning to buy a few more things with the most expensive licence that would have allowed unlimited usage and all, but I switched provider.

[jefflinwood]

I think the customer support at that Wordpress Plugin company was actually quite reasonable - if they use time limited S3 URLs (for presumably paid downloads), that's certainly their choice.

I must be completely misunderstanding something, but why wouldn't you buy the plugin, and then distribute it using your private server (like they suggest)? If the company goes out of business tomorrow, all of your builds will break if you depend on them being available.

I understand relying on RubyGems, NPM, etc., but commercial theme and plugin companies go out of business/switch licensing models/etc. all of the time.

[helloworld151]

Very true, I do want to be able to fetch the most up to date version of these plugins though, and doing this manually is very annoying. And having to maintain a private version that I have to constantly update is almost as annoying.

I just wish WordPress companies would join 2015 already. So many of them are stuck in the late early 00s.

And to think that WP powers more than a fifth of the web.

[jordanpg]

It's clear that the customer support rep has no training in customer relations, or at least doesn't care about customer satisfaction. It's rather obviously a bad business practice to engage in this kind of conversation with a customer.

That said, you definitely picked this fight. You got a direct answer to a direct question and then moved the conversation in a confrontational direction. "FYI, in 2015, that’s absolutely TERRIBLE."

I also don't think you're doing the world any good by not revealing what company this is. Why don't you let us judge for ourselves how bad things are?

[orangecat]

Honestly, this makes you look worse than the tech support person. They answered your question (presumably correctly), you didn't like the answer and told them they suck, and it unsurprisingly devolved from there.

[helloworld15]

It's a customer's right to say "I think this is terrible and I am disappointed" and I think that's miles away from telling anyone they suck.

[simonblack]

Instead of clarifying the request, in case the support person had misunderstood it, the customer goes on the attack on the very first message after the first reply. The second reply of the support person is an explanation, and once again the customer continues the attack.

If I was the support person, I wouldn't accept that. People are mirrors, they reflect how you are treating them. If you ever feel you are mistreated, it's likely that your own previous behaviour is at fault.

[helloworld151]

As a customer, you have a right to complain and point out your disappointment in the service you're offered.

As previously said in another comment I'll stipulate that I could have phrased things better, much better - but I stand by what I said. Any code vendor should provide automated ways to retrieve your goods. It's code after all.

What bothered me by far the most is that this condescending support person hinted that there MAY be ways for me to do that, but because I didn't phrase things well enough he didn't tell me.

And even when he proceeded with such condescending comments, he refrained from even trying to offer possible solutions to what I might be actually asking.

That is being condescending on steroids and it's the furthest thing from customer support.

I don't know about you, but I'm not into receiving veiled insults from people I give money to.

[nesu]

An honest feedback.

SUPPORT: There is no supported capability to do that with any "COMPANY_NAME" product, thanks.

CUSTOMER: FYI, in 2015, that’s absolutely TERRIBLE. None of the other premium providers game me a STRAIGHT NO.

1. Sometimes, when support made the wrong initial contact, all future correspondence will turn sour. Make the first impression count.

2. Having 'thanks' at the end of sentences seems casual/unprofessional to me, if not rude. Maybe something like "thank you for your message" as an opening line on that email might be better.

3. At least you should have offered alternatives, rather than leaving the customer empty-handed. If there are none, at least you could have said that "we are looking at/thinking about/working on/still gathering feedback from more customers/ to implement this feature in the near future. as soon as it's ready, we'll let you know."

4. I think most of your replies are too long. On the other hand, your initial reply almost looked like canned response.

5. Never vent out to your customers as support. You will never win. You have the final say on what features you will put to your products, but your customer has every right to express how they feel about your product/service. You have none. Don't take it personally.

disclaimer: I am writing based on experience

[helloworld15]

Hey, thank you for the feedback, I'm the author of this thread but I'm actually the customer, not the support rep.

I get behind every single point of your list. I felt like he just didn't care, and when I proceeded to point out I was disappointed and thought it was terrible of them to just slam the door in my face like that, I received an endless series of condescending remarks which made even angrier and caused my reactions.

I'm somewhat surprised by some of the answers in the thread but I did want other people's opinions in order to figure out where the real balance is.

I guess I still feel like I'm the one who's right, especially being the paying customer, but from everyone's feedback I should have kept the tone down.

I admit I really don't work well with condescension.

[nesu]

Oh I see, I wrote thinking you are on the support side.

I think you as a customer acted rationally and with honesty. Most customers, when hearing such an initial reply, do not bother responding at all (probably gone forever as a customer). And the worse thing is, support/devs think that, with no further response from the customer, they are doing a great job.

I myself am a customer-dev to at least two websites (been working with them for the last 5+ years). These sites have made at least a large share on their niche market, but their support is terrible. Business-wise, they think they can afford to lose a customer, so their 'default' support mode is to brush customers off (or leave support requests hanging). I believe many businesses are like this.

About the condescension, many devs are like that, treating support as 'inferior' to development and not equally important (cost center vs profit center mentality). When in fact, it's a profit opportunity. The customer's requirements are very specific, and from the correspondence, I can see that the customer understands that not all customers would request for such a feature, and probably would be willing to pay a premium for a custom-made solution. Most people here are devs, so they sympathize more with the support side (personally, I work on both domains).

[raghav305]

I think you had it coming .. as many may have pointed out already, the first response from the CSR was "to the point" - i.e. you asked a specific question - and you got an exact answer.

Maybe you didn't like the answer.

So, you resorted to using uppercase words (TERRIBLE).

And you were not given a NO for a service request - you had a question for which the answer was, rightly, NO!.. What else do you expect - a No with an apology attached?

Ideally, you should have responded to the CSR's first reply with a "Thanks for your response ... I would suggest you to strongly consider .. <blah> as it is already a norm and most competitors offer this ... " etc.

Instead, it appears that you took offense ... and well.. it was just downhill for you from there wasn't it :)

I also think the CSR didn't step out of bounds any time ... if this thread is reviewed by his supervisor, he/she would probably get a certificate of appreciation for handling an irate customer.

[wallflower]

Having done direct technical support for many years in my early career, the first unofficial rule of customer support is that the conversation never gets escalated such that emotions are involved.

Most competent technical support services do this by never making the customer feel that they are less powerful than they are. Usually, this is done by never making the customer aware that they are less smart (even if they are).

For example, if the customer was 'This product is the worst bleep ever'. Even if it is, you acknowledge it. 'Yes, Mr./Ms. we understand that the problem is causing you <x>. We're going to give you a RMA #' (RMA = Return Merchandise Authorization). You de-escalate. You give them a solution.

Apple's One-to-One program is legendary for being more of a 'teaching' relationship than a 'support' relationship.

It is a little more difficult if the person is asking highly technical questions. In that case, you always acknowledge that you are aware they know what they are doing. And figure out what they don't know that is causing them problems with their current situation.

Twilio's developer support (and Amazon's) are notable for what they know and more for admitting what they might not know (e.g. 'We do not know about this particular configuration. However, we will make sure we connect you with an engineer who can help you/research the problem')

This whole customer support transcript devolved rather rapidly into an ego-driven, I know more than you do pissing contest. Both sides are to blame. Either side could have de-escalated.

What was accomplished? Not much. If I were the technical support rep, I would have sent the first reply and added a question about what exactly the customer was trying to accomplish. Not a straight-up factual-based no - but trying to understand what the real problem was.

[StudlyCaps]

The customer support rep gave you the answer. You didn't like the answer and you picked the fight. Customer support staff don't get to decide what features a product will or will not have. Your feedback probably could have been directed to a different channel within that company that actually does look for feedback.

[trcollinson]

From a customer service and customer standpoint, I happen to think you were both out of line and it degraded quickly. I am glad to see you not publicly shame the company though.

However, I would like to speak to the original premise that a company should have a wget/curlable url for a Wordpress plugin as a basic need for the DevOps world we live in. This is patently false.

From a company providing a plugin standpoint this makes no sense at all. If they would like to make a package which works with one of the myriad package management systems, that is one thing. If they would like to create chef and puppet scripts which install their plugin and the associated licensing needs for their clients who use these environments, then fantastic. This could be a market differentiator. But giving just a static URL system may not make business sense for even some of the mid and large size Wordpress plugin companies. It could effect the companies security, revenue model, and even the security of their customers. A DevOps ready plugin system would be a nice feature but it would also require thought and preparation.

When I hear that you would like to be able to wget/curl the plugin so you have the "most up to date version of the plugin" without the work of doing this "manually" which is "very annoy", I get concerned. If a consultant I was using for my Wordpress needs were to want to automatically update third part plugins, even if only on initial install, without thoroughly testing and version locking them first, I would be mortified! With RubyGems, npm, and the like, there is a reason we version lock! Particularly in an automated deployment DevOps based environment.

With this particular scenario the customer service agent had the right idea, though I admit it took the agent a while to get to the answer and the whole conversation could have been better. If it were me I would download the latest version of the plugin when I was ready to test it. I would test it in my test environments to make sure the most up to date version of the plugin worked as I expected it to, then I would load it into a private repository for deployment. I would then write a simple chef recipe to retrieve the latest version of the plugin on system install, or upgrade the plugin on all of my existing systems. Any future updates to a plugin would just require a single download of the updated plugin when I was ready to test, a test run through the test environment, and then a deployment to where my chef recipe could see the update. Simple, safe, automated, and effective.

[helloworld15]

wget/curl as by far a last resort in this context, as unfortunately none of the companies I enquired care the least about this stuff.

It's not like these wget operations would happen in production, they would happen at scaffold time. But let's not bring this into the realm of whether I know what I'm doing or not.

Most of these plugins provide insular services in and of themselves (i.e. no code in the rest of the project relies on them for anything) so the only way the would break a project is by screwing up with the core software it self, i.e. WordPress.

Anyways - trust me I'd sign for a composer deal this moment, but if I can get a wget/curl url, an api endpoint or anything else over having to go through several webpages and downloading a zip file for every single plugin for every single new project I'll take that deal for the time being.

[jpetersonmn]

Honestly, I wouldn't have responded to your second message at all if I was them. You seem like the exact kind of customer I wouldn't care to have. Not worth the headache.

[partisan]

How quickly can you reach out to the company to apologize? Were you having a bad day or do you fly off the handle on a regular basis?

[helloworld15]

At what point exactly do you think I flied off the handle? When I said their stance was terrible and that I was disappointed? Or after the flood of condescension that came my way?

[partisan]

I feel like you just didn't like their completely valid response and then went after them for it. They provide a service. You might think their service should cover some feature but the reality is that they don't. You could have probably told them what you need in a nice way and waited to see whether they would support it. The way it went down, you lost them as a provider and they lost you as a customer, so what was gained?

[mariuolo]

They know what they're talking about and they can spell.

Perhaps I suffer from lower expectations, but that's very much above average:)