Better Product Managers, and Product Management

Congratulations!  One of your customers cares enough about your product to write you and complain!

Don’t ignore it (don’t we all know by now that an ignored angry customer doesn’t just fade away?) and don’t procrastinate responding.   It’s hard to go wrong with your response if you follow the guideline of the 4 A’s:

• Apologize
• Admit
• Ask
• Appreciate

Apologize

Good apologies are specific. “I’m sorry” in response to a detailed paragraph is not very satisfying; “I’m sorry that we weren’t able to do X and Y for you” shows that you read their email and understand their concerns.

Good apologies use “I/we”, not “you”. Compare these two:

• “I’m sorry you had a bad experience with our site”  (implies that the problem might be you, you annoying/whiny/stupid customer)
• “I’m sorry we weren’t able to provide a good site experience” (does not imply a shift in responsibility)

Admit

Admit that the problem is valid.  Admit that your workflow is long or your UI is confusing or whatever the problem is.

We are very hesitant to do this.  It’s like we have some belief that admitting our stuff has flaws, somehow gives secret superhero power to our enemies.   Or perhaps we think we can Jedi-mind-trick our customers: “These are not the features you’re looking for”.

Either way, this is counterproductive.  Admitting you were wrong gives customers the confidence that you’re going and try to get it right.  They’ll probably even help you.

Ask

You have just been handed an awesome opportunity to learn more from a customer.  Don’t waste it.

Ask for clarity: To be sure I understand you, was the problem [re-state the problem] or something else?

Ask for suggestions: We’d like to make [problem] better.  Do you have any ideas on how we could improve?

Ask for continued input: Can I show you some mockups or a demo when we have some progress on fixing [problem]?

Ask for continued usage: I hope you’ll continue to use us as we work to improve [problem] and the product in general.

Appreciate

Take a minute to go beyond a simple “thank you”.  (Remember, this person not only spent enough time on your product to get frustrated, they then spent MORE of their time so they could tell you exactly why they got frustrated.)    Thank them for being the first person to report this bug, for so honestly describing the frustration they felt, for detailing their thought process, for explaining exactly why something was such a problem.

I’d say “hopefully you don’t get many of these emails”, but that would be a lie.  I hope you DO.  We should all be so lucky as to have customers who care enough to complain.

Just respond to them well and use them to make your product better.

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