Why I Won’t Be Using BetaPunch for User Testing
Alternate Title: How NOT to Do Social Media for Your Startup
This morning, I happily tweeted about the service UserTesting.com, which I’ve been using to get brutal but extremely helpful feedback on user experience at Referly.
The Twitter account for user testing startup BetaPunch replied (see the full thread of tweets here), asking why we weren’t using their service instead.
I replied that I was still annoyed (which I am) that they publicly tweeted links to the results of free usability tests they ran for us when we were trying out their product back in October (thankfully they agreed to delete the tweets at the time). After that, I felt like my privacy had been violated (and who really wants competitors, strangers, potential investors, etc. viewing user tests of their very early stage and admittedly confusing product) and we already were familiar with UserTesting.com so I decided to stick with them.
I figured there was some very junior social media person manning the account and assumed the conversation would probably end there. But it didn’t, so we have a little social media case study in what not to do if you’re going to chase after your competitor’s customers.
So, I won’t be using BetaPunch. They’re rude, don’t respect my privacy, and clearly don’t want me to be their customer anyway. Not sure how they missed “the customer’s always right” – but I’d settle for “don’t be mean to customers” in this case.
I don’t need to be right, I just need to be right enough to want to pay you.
What do you think, is it ungrateful to trial a freemium product and then not upgrade? Let me know what you think in the comments.
And BetaPunch, you’re welcome for the traffic… enjoy the SEO, too.
118 Comments
Oli Sansom
Yikes.Â
thomasknoll
Wow, that is really special. Blows my mind when businesses don’t at least *try* to encourage and support and rectify things with their customers or potential customers. But, to take it to this level? I hope they learn a good lesson from this experience and change their tune.Â
Anonymous
Seriously! A company that prides themselves on customer insights and yet misses the customer service aspect. Ridiculous.
Mariya Genzel
In one of the business school cases, a CEO called someone an “idiot” (to their face) I thought, “that’s unrealistic, who would do that?” Unfortunately, as one meets more and more people, one realizes that some what-should-be-adult-and-mature people have a self-filtering valve of a teenager… You know this as well as I do, Danielle, that early-stage startups, unless they’re unique in a niche, can only win by being slavishly devoted to their customers 🙂 at least to their face 🙂
Rob
Unless it is some sort of an evil plan to get traffic by giving so bluntly “not what they teach you in startup school” (or in kindergarten) customer service , then this is just plainly bad manners, bad business conduct and just rude. It shows that the person running this is not mature enough to run anything in my opinion.Â
Jack
http://i.imgur.com/LIF0r.png
Tregfrgfgfd
Honestly, BetaPunch handled this terribly, but you dont come out a queen either.
Felipe Carvalho
Come on! You work for BetaPunch, right? 🙂
Danielle Morrill
Any… ahem… feedback for me?
Jack
I think you handled it right, there is no question here
Sevki
Basically all you have done is post screen caps of your twitter conversation (which anyone who follows either one of you could have seen) and have offered no insight or statistics or research about how to handle social media right with presenting other examples both good and bad; that in my opinion would have been a good post. While your reaction is not unwarranted it seems a bit childish and petty.
Fadzlan
Irregardless of how *she* handles it, she is in fact the customer.
This is not how you handle a customer. If I got treated like this, I would not be coming back. Some people maybe would, but do you think the masses would?
Sevki
“Irregardless of how *she* handles it”No. It is regarding how she handled it
“Any… ahem… feedback for me?”
Because she literally asked for it.Â
PS.  “the prefix ir- means “not” (as it does with irrespective), and the suffix -less means “without”, the word irregardless could therefore be expected to have the meaning “in regard to”, instead of being merely a synonym of regardless.”
Tregfrgfgfd
She isnt just “a customer.” She is also “1st employee at Twilio” and “Founder of …” As such, I expect more from her than “these guys were mean to me.” Some insight, or perspective, or some advice to the company on how to improve, all these are productive responses. This, however, is an attempt (albeit rather successful) at a slap in the face. If she were my CEO, I’d be worried. That is the point, that the way you handle hard situations shows your character (especially when you are the one hurt), not when things are easy.
Anon125
She wouldn’t be CEO at any major tech company. Even if she was, she would fail as a CEO with this immature behavioral response to a startup doing poor marketing and her whimsical egotistic twitter shouting match. The only way she could be CEO is at some startup that would later become orphaned ( like most) during there first year because of her actions. All she has riding on her is her accolades of being on Forbes lists and so forth. There’s 16 year old and young 20 year old wunderkinds that will make an actual difference. All she is doing is trying to be the next “can i get rich startup wanna-be” silicon valley snob. This is the reason why real developers and experience serial entrepreneurs are actually successful and hate this kind of turmoil brought on by the posers of the tech-industry.Â
Chad D Elliott
You are not, in fact, right, simply because you’re the customer. Any amount of entitlement or attitude is completely inappropriate. It’s understandable that you would be upset when your expectations are not met, especially after communicating them so clearly, but engaging in a “shouting match” on twitter is certainly not the way to respond. Obviously BetaPunch is in the wrong here, and by far the worst participant, but disrespect on either side of the line is still disrespect. As civil human beings, we should strive to be courteous to one another, even when pointing out mistakes or expressing our frustration.
Werhgsasd
Good points Fadzlan, but I’m afraid that as you seem to believe that ‘irregardless’ means ‘regardless’ your opinion is invalid.
Gabe da Silveira
Exactly. Â People act childishly all the time, everyone does at one time or another, but when you’re representing a company you have to swallow your pride and be professional at all times. Â If I was the CEO of BetaPunch this employee would be fired on the spot. Â If it was the CEO of the company, well, they got a long uphill battle to understand how to build a real business if they spend their time instigating Twitter fights with non-customers instead of focusing on, you know, running the business. Â The fact that they are making tweet after tweet just to win an argument that has nothing to do with A) forwarding business goals or B) providing customer service should give both investors and potential customers serious pause as to what their priorities are. Â If you need to vent publicly, how about go home at the end of the day and post a trollface on your tumblr like the rest of the kiddie wantrapreneurs.
Anonymous
 Irregardless? That’s not even a word!
Gfdgdfgd
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/irregardless
Anonymous
 Still not a word. An American corruption of an English word, maybe – but as meaningless as “I could care less” and equal in its conveyance of the opposite intended meaning.
Sdfsdfsdsdf
So according to Merriam Webster this word has been around for a little longer than 100 years yet it still not a word? What was the cut off date for new English words. I must have missed it.
You do realize almost the entire English language is comprised corruptions of other words, right?
UltimateChuckie
This is a good point. Just think… after 100 years we’ll also be saying Omg, Lol, Lmao etc. in professional settings too!
Anonymous
 You also used “comprised” wrong. But I’ll put that down to the fact you’re ignorant. If you mean to say “regardless” say “regardless” – not something which can be construed to mean the exact opposite “irregardless” – however, do use “irregardless” and “I could care less” if you want other people to perceive you as a moron who can’t understand basic word meanings.
Kgfdgfhj
Just because it’s in a dictionary doesn’t mean that it can be used in conversation without making you sound ignorant. I wouldn’t be surprised if ‘reem’ and ‘totes amaze’ end up in dictionaries, simply through massive spread in popular culture and discourse. Which is all fine (this is how language evolves) but at present time in the English language double negatives are considered wrong. ‘Irregardless’ is like a pretentious way of saying ‘I never done nothing’.
Shootupsomedub
Irregardless, people still do that?!?, come on
Grammar person
“Irregardless” is not a word.
Hrfyrtyerytr
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/irregardless
The Acidic Hasidic
1. irregardless lololololo
2. why is *she* in stars? are you implying she is not actually a woman?
Ben
“Irregardless”?
Ste
 “Irregardless” is not a real word, cretin.
andybak
I can barely begin to explain how misguided you are on this. Firstly – you’re mixing together two issues that differ by an order of magnitude: whether this blog post could be more in depth and whether Danielle behaved badly or not.
The first isn’t important and I disagree with you quite strongly on the second. In any case, surely it’s indisputable that Betapunch behaved worse? They escalated what struck me as a valid complaint into to a new level of rudeness and wouldn’t drop it even when they had a chance.
And they are trying to sell a product and a brand.
Anonymous
I think it’s so obvious what the good way of handling this is that it’s barely even worth mentioning: Fucking apologize and end the discussion.
Anonymous
 You’re really “nuking” it, in my opinion. It’s not her job to teach businesses good customer service. As a consumer, she’s doing what has proven good & bad business alike since the beginning of our time. Word of mouth marketing. She has exposed BetaPunch for their immaturity and incompetence and probably saved a lot of people a lot of headaches. Sadly, at the same time, this article probably drives more traffic to their service than they’ve had all year. Welcome to the interwebs.
Anonymous
If it wasn’t for the blog post, I wouldn’t have seen this so I applaud the copy-paste.
Sometimes no statistics or insights need to be offered beyond just showing people what happened.Surely you can draw your own conclusions from what is presented here?!
Antonio Pratas
The post could be a bit more constructive yes, but I believe Danielle’s point here was to show everyone a great example of how not treat a client. It’s ridiculous the way they treated her, as she said, it’s something you might think but never tell to your clients. I for one was amazed of how bad can a company be to their possible clients.Â
Steve O'Connor
Did you miss the title of the post? The content matches exactly, so what’s your problem? There are lots of posts about handling social media correctly (it’s not actually that hard if you have a modicum of common sense), but nothing of that was promised by Danielle. This serves as a warning for people thinking of using BetaPunch’s services.
voretaq7
A case study in “What NOT To Do” is often valuable in its own right – I think Danielle’s post is an excellent example of that.
Here we had a company that:
(1) Disclosed what any reasonable person would consider to be confidential information.
(2) Made good on that, to some extent, by removing the disclosure on request (not ideal, but good on them for that).
(3) Twitter-Spammed someone using a competitor’s service to try to win business.
(4) Reacted poorly (insulting the potential customer? REALLY?) when called out on previous misconduct from.
(5) Didn’t know enough to LET IT DROP when the customer was irritated by (4)
(6) Continued being petulant after this post went up.
So they did 5 things wrong, and 1 thing right (back in the prehistory of this conversation). I think they deserve a little slapping around for this.
(And frankly it’s Danielle’s blog – she can post cat pictures all day and bash any company she wants)
Anon125
I agree with you Sevki. She handled this poorly, and it shows with her failing startup. A person should just dimiss these kinds of unwarranted solicitations and move on. Instead, acting as an immature instigator to shed light on a startup that doesn’t follow the “homogeneous” y-combinator blueprint (if one even exists) is why she isn’t the victim here, but both her and the startup are. The villain isn’t the startup with it’s tacky marketing, but her for “slandering” a startup. Shame on you.Â
Carl Youngblood
Sevki, your argument is garbage. Danielle has done absolutely nothing wrong. She posted screencaps so that people could read about the entire incident in one place without having to scour the web. In that respect she is a good blogger who values her readers’ time. And her reactions are not childish nor petty at all. BetaPunch is completely out of line and should never talk to customers that way.
Danielle was not showing ingratitude at all. BetaPunch offered her a free service under the assumption that its value would be self-evident and serious customers would gladly buy it. If their product were valuable, they would have no need to try to make the customer feel beholden to them after offering the free service. It is the cost of doing business under their chosen business model. If they come to the conclusion that the business model is not working, they can always change it. But offering something for free and then making people feel bad for not giving something back is inappropriate.
And it is not necessary for Danielle to post an entire write-up on how to do this right. That is simply not the scope of this post. She is merely trying to offer a simple, quick example of what not to do, which is valuable on its own.
Zachary Chastain
Well, I would agree that this post has little value in understanding social strategy, because come on, anyone with basic knowledge of manners wouldn’t treat a customer like this, in person, online, or anywhere else. If you have to have something this simple spelled out for you, you’re in the wrong industry. I believe that it does serve as a good warning regarding BetaPunch’s practices though (sharing your very private information publicly), and the way they view, value, and handle their customers or potential customers.
One of the cool things about having influence, a popular blog, etc, is that now when you google BetaPunch, the third result is Danielle’s article about why she won’t use Beta Punch, and the 4th is The Hacker News featuring her post on their site. It’s very visible, so that’s a pretty big problem they just created for themselves. If this article teaches anything, it’s don’t get into an argument with customers, and certainly not with customers that are influential online. It’s a great case study for what could happen if you slip up on a social media channel and put your foot in your mouth. Obviously many social media professionals or people who have inherited social media tasks in their workloads don’t seem to understand that these conversations won’t just end there and never be seen by anyone, or we wouldn’t still be seeing this sort of thing.
Derek
“insight or statistics or research about how to handle social media right”? The only reason she’d take the time to write something like this is because it’s such a binary example – this is EXACTLY how to do it badly. This is so beyond common sense it’s laughable, and anyone who needs a counter example or “stats” on why this is bad and something else would have worked should be kept far, far away from a keyboard and screen with access to the internet, especially if they have a product or company they want people to use and pay for.Â
tdhurst
You want her to give a free lesson on how to not be an asshole to customers to the company that was just a huge asshole to her?
We call that work, and people typically charge money for it.
Lindsay
This post was not about the right way to handle social media. Both titles very clearly state it’s about why she will not be using BetaPunch, and how they are doing their social media very wrong.
Something like this does not need statistics and research, any intern in a good marketing team could tell you never to insult a customer, never be rude, never publicly tweet a customer’s information; all of these things are blatantly unprofessional.
If she has posted this after their one rude tweet at a customer, it’d be pushing it to call it “petty”; after two, it’s practically a responsibility to let others know what they might be dealing with if they make the mistake of conducting business with these people.
Welcome to a world where businesses are held accountable for crappy behaviour, whether you like it or not, it’s here to stay thanks to: Yelp, Publik Demand, influential blogs, etc.
Baker Karene
Are you kidding? This is something that no company should have done, period, regardless of what the customer says. If you need “insight or statistics or research on how to handle social media right” after reading the conversation that took place then you’re kind of turning into a robot. Empathy trumps statistics here.
Ziggerdigger23
Completely absurd of them – definitely won’t be using them in the future – in this case, maybe a single response from you would do – it seems like both of you want to get the last word and your egos are coming out.
Gabriel Song
Thanks Danielle for the insights. I’m sure someone like me won’t be looking at betapunch after seeing feedback like this. Not when they handle branding and relationships this way. Trust building is a lifelong journey, but it can also be dismantled overnight, especially when you cannot give a genuine apology.
tdhurst
I could have used more one-liners or the horribly annoying TweetThis buttons after you boiled down complicated thoughts into 140 characters or less so I could freely distribute and learn from those while in no way compensating you.
The internet is free, obviously. Everyone else’s time isn’t, and I’m pretty disappointed that I read the entire article (while chuckling) but couldn’t easily steal your content and use it to make myself look good.
I hope you learn from my above comments and adjust your behavior appropriately.
(If there is a sarcasm font, please active it for the entire comment above)
Sami Rageb
See my standalone comment for feedback (misposted)
Dsfs
you are ugly
migueldeicaza
The escalation comes clearly from using the hashtag “#classy”. Â Up until that point, both sides are venting their grievances. Â Â
But the venting becomes turns into a personal attack, with #classy. Â She deals with it very politely, considering she has just been insulted.
Luke Catlin
I had a similar situation happen with a referral tracking service provider.  I signed-up for their free trial and was charged for the first month of service before I’d had a chance to test out the service.  So I asked for a refund and if they’d be ok with me taking another free trial to evaluate the service.  I received the refund, but not until I was essentially scolded like a child by their CEO for asking for another free trial.  I was informed I should already know if I want to use the product or not. Â
As a SaaS CEO myself, I may have had the same thought, but would have kept it from exiting my mouth. Â A simple no would have sufficed. Â I guess I was being ungrateful. Lucky for us, we quickly moved on and found Refer.ly instead.
Semil
I was recently approached — in a friendly way — to get “free access” to a monthly service to try it out. In the message, the person also hinted that, if it went well, I would help publicize that. I politely said I wasn’t interested to begin with, and left it at that. No harm here, but overall, I think this all points to the competitive nature of the web and web services right now, where there’s too much money and human resources chasing a limited set of customers.
brianherbert
Can you imagine having to publicly thank every company hawking their product or service that you tried out? You gave them the opportunity to sell something to you, which should be thanks enough. They aren’t giving out trial/free access as a gift from the kindness of their hearts. They want your money.
Unlisted
wow what an ass that person is. Â I’m never using BetaPunch either!
SK
They should have informed earlier about the privacy of the transactions that were free, like some others (eg. Prezi) do. Case study for misusing a social forum to sort ugly fights. And lesson for startups how not to behave.Â
Scott Bartell
Just a bad move by BetaPunch – these tweets couldn’t have possibly turned out good for them…
Drew Olanoff
this has nothing to do with social media. if you talk to someone like this ANYWHERE, you’re an idiot. oy.
Arnor Heidar Sigurdsson
What a bunch of losers. They don’t just fail at social media, but fail at life in general. I’m tempted to find all their customers (though I doubt they have any) and tell them about this.
Jessica Darko
You dredged this up several months later? Â I’d never heard of you, but both of you get an F– you should have responded to each other privately. Â It’s wrong for them to have made your tests public, but you obviously want the public squabble… or you wouldn’t be bringing it all up agian in a blog post.Â
I hadn’t heard of you, but referly is on a list of potential affiliate partners for  an upcoming product.Â
This public display shows a distinct lack of common sense on your part (and a hint of a lack of integrity as well.) Â Â The list is now one shorter. I know, you don’t care, you’re sucking in all the gas you can in that silicon valley ycombinator bubble you live in, where this kind of a blog post sounded like a good idea… and you probably have no clue what I’m going on about.Â
That’s fine. Â Good luck.
Danielle Morrill
The original issue regarding them sharing test results publicly took place in October as you say, but the tweets from today are the root of the issue — it is the rudeness, not the tweeting of private info, that I took issue with. Â I let it go in October, but when they asked me this morning why I wasn’t using them I told them why, and it escalated to this nasty exchange.
I’m sorry and think it would be a shame if you decide not to use Referly as a result of this post, but I assure you I am a real person who is as (sometimes painfully) straightforward as they come and it is precisely because of this trait that it is highly unlikely you would regret doing business with me. Â It’s easy to accuse me of living in the Silicon Valley bubble, but that has more to do with your assumptions about my character and motives than reality. Â Read more posts on this blog, ask around, have coffee with me – and you’ll see.
Anonymous
Beta Trolls…
Anonymous
Someone needs to betapunch them right in the kisser.Â
Pingback:
Carrie Mantha
I had to go to the Twitter account because I honestly didn’t think this could be real.  The irony is unbelievable. . . they seemed to actually be asking why you were using a competitor and not them (most startups would KILL for a real user to give an honest answer to that question!), but they didn’t really want to hear the answer.  Even worse. . . the answer was something they could have easily apologized for (“oops, mea culpa!  We’ve discontinued that practice and would love to give you a credit to try us again.”) and implemented a change going forward in probably 30 seconds! Â
I think it’s a perfect example of people who externalize blame versus internalizing blame. . . when I get critical feedback on our site I usually apologize profusely, offer everything under the sun to make up for it, lock myself in a closet for 5 minutes so no one sees me crying, then work like a possessed person to fix the problem (kidding) (kind of). Â I don’t see what it gets you to lash out at someone giving honest feedback. Â
Brian
I work at a startup. Thank you for the advance warning.
Eric
This is unbelievable! I wonder if they felt every person who didn’t upgrade was ungrateful? I’m in disbelief at how unprofessional BetaPunch is, what an awful company!Â
Greg Childs
.
Greg Childs
Well-handled, Danielle. Â When a company puts out a trial offer, it’s incumbent upon them to “wow” you with its functionality, ease of use, and value. Â To imply that there’s some obligation on the part of the user to express gratitude is ludicrous. Â Clearly, their CEO has a screw loose. Â If it was that great, you, a seasoned SEO, would have upgraded and sung their praises. Â Instead, BP reveals themselves to be defensive and short-sighted, and you just picked up a ton of new followers. Â Best wishes, and thanks for the heads-up.
Allan Ebdrup
Good post. You’re a queen and they got what they deserved.
Anonymous
Great example for startups how to not answer customers. Thanks for the post.
Trolley
That’s good drama right here, but I didn’t come to read that.
ICTFox
Hear hear! Well done. Incredible rudeness. I’d never take my business to such a company.
ICTFox
Hear hear! The rudeness. Incredible. I’d never take my business to a company with such standards.
Michael Ball
To the actual question: “What do you think, is it ungrateful to trial a freemium product and then not upgrade? ”
Of course not! As a business, the entire point of freemium is that *some* people will upgrade. It’s similar to a trial. If there were an obligation to upgrade, it would simply be a pay-for service, and the “free” or “trial” parts would be moot. While giving thanks is certainly nice, if a company doesn’t handle things properly or meet your business you move on…maybe offer feedback if you’re so inclined, but even that could be taken the wrong way.
It seems that no one is perfect here, but you did move on months ago, and to now call you out on it just seems petty. While it’s great to strive for more users, it’s also natural that some will use your competitor.Â
The clear solution would have been to ask what else the competitor offers and to see if you could add those services to your own product, not ridicule the customer. At the end of the day, a service and a customer may simply not be a smart business fit for each other. As a product or service, why not just say “Sorry that we can’t support that right now, but please check back in XYZ time”? Maybe that’s too simple…
Matthew Lanham
Seems completely fair, i think you handled it well Danielle, it seems absolutely ludicrous that they would publish your results publicly, so many reasons why that could have impacted adversely on your product. Is that something that they are covering in their Terms of Use and Privacy Policy?
david payne
Here’s the next Steve Jobs dismissing why she won’t be using ‘X’. Grow up mademoiselle, no one gives a fuck about the billion-and-oneth start-up ending in ‘ly’. Actually, after reading this post, I feel like the other readers too – There was nothing insightful in here, and I really want to try out Betapunch, now that I’m pretty sure they would have learnt their mistake.
UltimateChuckie
Omg shocking they would talk to you in this way, let alone publish information publicly without permission! I don’t think this you need to offer any insight or improvement as people have suggested. Only because it’s very obvious how their customer service needs to be improved here. If anyone spoke to me this way face-to-face…
UltimateChuckie
Edit by way of post:
Omg shocking they would talk to you in this way, let alone publish
information publicly without permission! I don’t think you need to
offer any insight or improvement as people have suggested. Only because
it’s very obvious how their customer service needs to be improved here.
If anyone spoke to me this way face-to-face…
Tim Parker
I for one will never ever go near their service, appalling behaviour / service.
Thomas
You are just a mean bitch
Dfsdfsdf
They made a simple mistake, apologised for it and did something about it by removing the Tweets. Let it go.
Anonymous
It’s hard operating in public, especially for a lot of tech people. When you are more adept at talking to machines than humans, there is a real learning curve. If you’re running a tech startup and dealing with people isn’t your thing, you should definitely consider hiring a social media professional so you don’t wind up in situations like this.
Tim Almond
“What do you think, is it ungrateful to trial a freemium product and then not upgrade? Let me know what you think in the comments.”
Certainly not.
If a company gives something away, they give it away. If they can turn “free” into a paid-for product, that’s great, but if they can’t then that’s their problem, not the customer’s. Doesn’t matter if you didn’t buy it because it wasn’t a fit, or because the free version was all you needed.
Dontspamrt
Yeah, sorry, you come off as a bit high-and-mighty in this. BP didn’t handle its response well at all, but you acted like an angry teenager.
If a company is going to tweet itself to death, let it. Getting in an argument with a faceless individual makes both parties look silly–but one of those parties doesn’t have a face to laugh at.
Bryan Eisenberg
This was just bad form and poor business practices by BetaPunch. I am not just saying it because I am one of UserTesting.com’s advisors. Social Media 101 never fan the flames of an uproar.
Kwks
I agree that BetaPunch completely handled it the wrong way but your reaction wasn’t correct either. Customer is always right and decides what he or she wants to use.
Lukas
BetaPunch’s behavior on Twitter is completely insane and absolutely unacceptable, but the fact that they seem to now also be trolling your comments? What a toxic company.
Jeremy Bee
I don’t get the “piling on” that’s happening here, over Danielle Morrill. Â She didn’t do anything wrong at all and more, she spent a certain amount of time presenting this information to us in a nice blog post. I’m thinking if she was a guy, and if she had flown off the handle and argued with these idiots more aggressively, this would be an “epic” post that made it to Buzzfeed or something for the day. Â But since she’s female and polite and reasonable, she is the devil somehow? Â Gross. Â
rpcutts
Unbelievable. PR at its very best.
I’m amazed they weren’t much more sheepish after the original incident.Â
I’m surprised people are being critical of you for documenting the indecent in this way. The more potential customers know about there potential to be arseholes the better.
Andrew B-Thompson
Harsh lesson, but fair. Managing your public persona is of extreme importance in the *democracy by internet* era!
I made comment once about poor service on twitter with a service provider recently who also got upset. I received a private email which basically said I was damaging their business and should refrain! I replied that I wasn’t into deliberately damaging but did want to get their attention as had an outstanding issue that needed urgent resolution (FYI since resolved and very pleased with said service provider).
Besides, such a thing can actually be used to make you look good. Just look at the way O2 handled their recent cellular network outages in London http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-07/17/o2-outage-social-media-masterclass
Anonymous
The ACTUAL thing that is “damaging” the business is their treatment of the customer. The customer is just pointing it out. The room isn’t dirty because you turned on the lights, it’s dirty because it’s dirty.Â
Another thing, it seems the “classy” hashtag is reciprocal in that by calling out somebody as not being classy on a public social network, you yourself are also not perceived as being so.Â
But seriously, why are individuals allowed to tweet directly from the company twitter account without at least one other person checking your work? That should be standard procedure for any official communication. It doesn’t mean to lawyer up on your language, but at least have some oversight to keep things level-headed. Even the nicest people have times when they perceive something as an attack and snap in retaliation. Don’t let that happen to your business.
Anonymous
This is exactly like being turned down for a second date and then shouting at the top of your lungs “But I bought you dinner that time!! You OWE me!”
Paul Steffen
Interesting thing is to do a whois on betapunch.com and then Googling the only name that pops up. Pretty much tells you everything. (just sayin’)
Anonymous
I’m continually amazed at how easily customer social media interactions can go south, because the “customer service rep” has obviously no understanding of how to talk with a customer (prospective, past or current). The record of this “conversation” inevitably causes me to perceive BetaPunch personnel as the types who make rude jokes about customers among themselves while failing to provide any service or appropriate response to the customer. Kind of like having a restaurant service person go back in the kitchen and spit in your food… and then come tell you they did so.Â
Anonymous
I’ve recently went off on a FB page, because email support was rude and unable to help with my situation. Â I won’t get into the details, but it was a ‘resolved’ billing issue, that wasn’t resolved and had been going on for some time. Out in the open, the situation was handled quickly and they put their best foot forward. Â
Regardless of consumer poking or being provoked, you should never poke back or get personal.  They asked a question and received an answer.  Sometime the answer may not be complimentary, and you just have to suck it up and learn. Â
Andrew Swift
On an iPad 3, all updates, I see the text for 1/2 second, the everything but the actual article. There’s a big white space in the middle of the page.