Startup Customer Service

I upgraded this blog last week to WordPress 2.6. Prior to the upgrade I had been using a custom permalink structure. Upon upgrading from 2.5 to 2.6 the link structure would not display individual posts.

As I a result I changed my permalink structure to one of the defaults and my blog began displaying the posts correctly. Now I had changed my permalinks throughout the site.

I use Disqus the great full featured commenting system. Disqus essentially creates a forum area based on your post permalink for your comments. As I said I had just changed all my permalinks and my comments were now disconnected. My comments were effectively floating in the blogosphere.

I searched Google for a fix. I searched around on the Disqus site. David of the KnightKnetwork pointed me to this thread on the Disqus forums.

Apparently I was not the only one having this issue. In the thread Daniel Ha the founder of Disqus said,

“Please email help@disqus.com and we can, well, help. 🙂 “

I immediately sent an email as prescribed. My email basically said I upgraded WordPress and changed my permalink structure, Help! I sent the email at mid morning.

I received a reply at in the early afternoon from Jason Yan of Disqus. It said,

“Hi Franklin,
I’ve merged all your threads so they point to the new links.
Thanks,
Jason”

This was outstanding customer service. A while ago Marc Andreessen wrote several posts about startups. Startups are interesting entities. Building business processes from the ground up seems to be very challenging but very rewarding for the startup entrepreneur. Infrastructure needs to be built from the ground up. Customer service could be easily overlooked or handled very poorly.

I try many Web 2.0 Alphas and Betas and it seems the successful ones pay attention to the details. It is rare to find a good software product with poor customer service. Customer service is important to the end user.

I want to thank Jason Yan and the Disqus team for their prompt service.

I believe Disqus will be successful not only because of their great product but their great customer service as well.

In the world we know as Web 2.0 who is good at customer service? Who isn’t?

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Linked 2008-06-10

Linked 2008-06-10

Google Reader Gets Notes

Google Reader Notes 1Image by VoIPman via Flickr

Google Reader gets notes. The ability to annotate a note to a post is very cool. The ability to share anything from the web feed or not is cool. But…

I typed a quick note as I shared a Louis Gray post. But I misspelled a word. How do I correct it? This is just an example of many questions I have with these new enhancements.

Sidebar – Who else thinks this is too little too late? I am using FriendFeed so much this is almost irrelevant. FriendFeed allows more than a note. It is a real social network with conversation. I can comment and then edit the comment. – End Sidebar

I still love Google Reader it just seems like the enhancements are so reactionary. What happened to Reader being on the cutting innovative edge? It seems Reader is back on their heels.

Profy.com a new hosted blog/feed reader Google Reader competitor is giving much more flexibility for noting. Profy‘s free form way of letting you share a whole post and blog it in any way you want is much better. [For more on Profy see David Knight’s interview with Svetlana Gladkova, Profy Vice President.]

The Google Reader note is good idea. I just think buggy enhancements need to be thought out more. Do not put it in play and then fix it.

But now my first ever note has a freaking TYPO! How do I fix it? Geez. I wanted Google Reader to update already but the enhancements need to be clear and valuable. Get rid of the bugs and complete the enhancements. So here is my bug/completion list…

  • Combine Notes to remove duplicates – If one entry has a note and the other doesn’t I do not need to read both.
  • Show/Link original linker – If you read alot of shared feeds or just Scobles’ you will see notes and have no idea whom they came from. I suggest linking to that person’s shared feed.
  • Edit my notes – you can not edit a note once it has been posted.
  • Fix the double share process. If you note something and check shared it shares it once. When the note box goes away the share button is not selected. Make the check box on the note window flag an entry as shared.
  • Friendfeed can read comments separate from the entry. Question only: Can the notes be read in XML independently from the post?