Sincerity VS. Professionalism
We recently received an email from a hosting provider of ours. Not long ago they had about a half day of outage due to an unavoidable circumstance caused by outside world infrasructure. Due to the advanced notice, and the frequent updates on status, we were sympathetic. After all, they scheduled the outage early morning on a Sunday…
The problem came a week or two after the down-time, when their email newsletter came out. It contained snarky little comments like:
“Hopefully, since you don’t run a web hosting company, it’s not so big a deal for you. Yeah, you can’t check your email from midnight-5am Pacific time one Sunday…”
and
“On top of the awesome benefits mentioned here-before in section 2, we also have a couple new completely stupid benefits which I am obligated…”
and titling the website page
“super-lame-apology/”
Needless to say, as a progressive company we value the ability to cut through the normal bullet-point rhetoric, and talk using real world language. We enjoy people that can intertwine humor, and a good time into their work life. We DON’T enjoy being made to feel foolish for being a customer. We DON’t enjoy being talked down to, or not taken seriously…
It’s strange that when what all of us are really looking for is a bit of sincerity, a company would choose to return the favor with sarcasm. We were lured in by your offbeat attitude, but we don’t feel that sincerity and professionalism are antonyms…
So thank you Dreamhost for teaching us a lesson about how NOT to treat customers. You just lost our business. We’ll take bullet point rhetoric over an anti-client attitude any day.
Maybe we’re just not in on the joke? see what you think:
Comments
it’s good to use honesty and some occasional subtle humour, i don’t think it’s good to try and sidestep an actual service problem by writing like a 14 year old.
right on brother.