This is a long overdue post, but I’d like to thank Mike Gorrell from Ebsco for responding to my post about webinars.
It’s my philosophy that the best people to complain to are the people that can actually do something about your problem. I’m ashamed to admit, then, that sometimes I blog about things that frustrate me without actually talking to the people who can help me out with the problem. (With vendors or big organizations, it can be hard to figure out who those people are – but I often don’t even try.) Although my blog is public, I imagine my audience to be a small group of friends and colleagues.
So it surprises me when vendors respond to my blog posts. I realize it’s not technically difficult to be aware of my posts; it’s easy enough to set up Google Alerts or Technorati to notify you of when you, your product, or your company has been mentioned somewhere on the Internet.
Even so, I really appreciate it when vendors do this. Coming to my blog to talk to me about your product makes me feel genuinely listened to.
Do you know of other vendors or organizations that do this? How do you feel about it?
Well I just had this happen when someone from LibGuides Springshare was monitoring Twitter and responded to a query I posted to the collective. I’ll tell you, I was blown away. Again, as you said, it’s not hard to look around, set up a search, and let that info come to you. But it’s like the best of both worlds!! Customer service at its finest! I like it when I whine/complain and someone who matters listens and helps out. Less work for me (who like you, am not usually one to whine/complain to the right people). Another day, another time I may have had a different opinion, but for today, I love it!
Brandi, I’m a big fan of Springshare – Slaven (the CEO) always seems to respond to blog entries that mention LibGuides. I also think they’re the first library vendor to be on Twitter.
Well, Comcast did so recently but it was total crap as it was only their recently hired masses of PR minions and not actually anyone who could/would do something.
Slightly better were the folks from NetNewsWire. Gave a few suggestions which I (had already) tried. Then they came back and suggested I send them my crash logs so they could see what was the issue.
The problem was they gave no real instructions. What crash logs? The ONE generated by the Mac to be sent to Apple? Something else in the program/Library folders I was already dorking around in?
Not wanting to waste people’s time and not knowing exactly what they needed I responded with a short plea to let me know exactly what I was looking for and where, and for a place to send them.
A couple days later someone else from NNW popped in and said to send them to such and such and use a help ticket number they had created for me. Well, thank you. But I still didn’t know what I was sending!
NetNewsWire is still broken and I will not recommend it to anybody although I was quickly growing to love it for the short time it worked for me.