Last week, I posted my e-mail response to the Zendesk representative I dubbed “Heidi” (obviously not her real name), wherein I compared her to a crazy ex-girlfriend, bent on constant reassuring contact. Zendesk got around to responding to that sentiment directly. Fair is fair, so I’m posting the rest of the conversation, which turned out rather positive. Second impressions can still make a difference, it seems.

Although my smart-ass reply was intended to provide laughs as much as to make my point about the fanatical contact, I made no attempt to hide the fact I was writing out of annoyance. Further, I made it clear I initially had no intention of replying unless I actually needed their help during my one-month trial (now just over a week old).

The Saga Continues

Not long after sending that e-mail (that evening in my time zone), I got a reply not from “Heidi”, but from “Bob” (as we’ll call him).

For reference, here is the original post containing the e-mail I sent in response to the two e-mails and a phone call just days after starting my trial.

Here was Bob’s reply:

Hi Joshua

Thanks for your email.

Ill pass on your feedback. It’s important for us to hear your thoughts and we appreciate your time.

Groan! Not only was it weighing in light on the give-a-damn-o-meter, but it looked like they used one of their own Macro responses.

Here’s my response:

Aw, come on! That long, heartfelt email and that’s all I get in response? Lame …

To be honest, Bob’s response looked exactly like the “Kindly fuck off and have a nice day” kind of responses I expect when I run my mouth to a company. I was wrong. Fast-forward two bottles of wine (between two people – shut up) and a day later. In an unprecedented act of bonafide give-a-damn, I received this from … aw, hell, let’s call this one “Olivia”:

Hi Joshua,

Where to begin … First, please don’t take our delayed response as an indication that we’ve been ignoring you. In fact everyone at Zendesk involved in connecting with customers on the phone or through email has thought about you several if not many times today.

Second, we weren’t sure how to reach out to you – how you wanted to be spoken to. Since you responded to the email below, we’re hoping this is the way that you wanted to hear from us.

Now, the most important thing that we want to say: we apologize for annoying you. We apologize for scaring you!

I’m happy to share with you why we screwed up but I’m pretty certain that’s not important to you. What’s important to us is that you have impacted how we do business. We’ve dialed back and taken time to correct very important things that were out of whack. What Bob said below wasn’t a pat response. But he should have put some effort into acknowledging the fact that we screwed up and that you had taken significant time to point this out to us in a colorful (hope that’s the right word) and creative way. And most importantly, he didn’t apologize. Please accept our apology and know that we don’t want to be a crazy girlfriend. We want to be sound, thoughtful, reliable and responsive.

You gave us a very measured response. Thank you for that. You’re a great writer. I hope you’ll stick with us and continue to write to us. You’re feedback is on target and we’d like to hear your thoughts about all areas of our service, or as many areas as you choose to comment on.

Again, we’re sorry for the lousy communication. Please let us know if there’s anything else we can for you.

Best regards,

Olivia

I’m an Ass

I might as well say it: my first response was to laugh my ass off. Not a cruel laugh, you see, but a surprised (and mildly delighted) laugh. A gleeful chortle, if you will. I was not expecting this kind of response at all. In fact, I wouldn’t have been too surprised if they’d “fired me” as a customer or asked me not to contact Heidi or Bob again.

Then, yesterday, I re-read the response. I was in a completely different mood, having just woken up from a nice long weekend sleep-in. I felt this odd sensation to which I’m not very accustomed. The damndest thing. I felt … bad. Yes, that’s it. I felt bad.

Now Matt tells me I shouldn’t. He believes it was a very positive outcome, but I still felt pangs of that unpleasent sensation known as “feeling bad” about one’s actions. Nasty stuff, that. All I know is Heidi hasn’t written me back (or called) once (or twice).

The Josh Problem

Okay, I’m used to entire offices discussing the “Josh Problem”. I’m an ass. Not necessarily an asshole. Just an overall ass. I speak my mind. I say what others are only thinking. I make light of serious situations even if I’m the one who’s on the hot seat.

Note: Prospective employers, please ignore that last comment. Current employers … meh, all that “consummate professional” shit was just pillow talk, baby. You knew what this was.

Emergency Meetings in the Situation Room

So, from Olivia’s response, I can only conclude that an emergency meeting had been called in the high-tech Zendesk situation room … my photo on the central screen, my blog post and e-mail spread out on their Microsoft Surface table, Heidi in a holding cell, un-showered and hungry, stripped of her black spandex tactical unitard, Bob in the next, weeping over getting himself involved.

Okay, so it probably didn’t go quite like that. Heidi was likely executed and I feel just awful about it. My intention was to be humorous, not a dick. So wherever you are, Heidi, I apologize. As I get older, I keep trying to find better ways to deal with life’s frustrations. I find humor is much better than frothing heat-of-the-moment phone calls, but it can have a bite to it nonetheless.

In any case, I’m glad they recognize how incredibly important I am and held an emergency meeting in their situation room. I worry over which picture of me they used, but that’s a minor thing, really. The important thing is, they reached out to apologize and took their power to annoy seriously. For that I’m thankful. It has definitely improved my opinion of Zendesk’s sales tactics (or at least their ability to apologize for said tactics).

Silver Lining

Now it’s important to mention that toward the beginning of all of this, I had been in contact with their support team over a macro that broke as soon as I created it. It wouldn’t even let me delete it. It took them a few days to try to figure out what went wrong before they had it fixed but it wasn’t a show-stopper for me by any means, so it didn’t bother me (well, it bothered my OCD to see it there without the ability to clean it up, but whatever). When I asked what it was (I thought their app might not have escaped a slash I put in the name or something like that), the tech responded with a link to a documented Ruby issue. Cool. Thanks. That impresses me. I know slightly more than shit about Ruby or Rails, but not much more, however the ability and willingness to share the technical details with me is definitely something I consider “good will”.

So I didn’t mean to imply it was all bad. In fact, I’m pretty sure I communicated effectively that I didn’t think that was the case.

The Make-Up Kiss

Here’s my response to Olivia:

Olivia:

I don’t really work on the weekends, so I actually wasn’t expecting any kind of response until today. I’m also aware I’m not the only person in the world, so no harm done there.

On one hand, I was amused to hear about the impact my e-mail had. On the other, I was surprised to get any kind of real response, other than “we’ve removed you from our contact list”. On a third hand, if I had one, I had started to feel kind of bad since I didn’t hear back from Heidi at all. Are she and Bob alright? If not, I trust it was quick and they didn’t suffer.

I accept your apology of course, but I’m not sure it was necessary. I did kind of poke you guys in the ribs a few times (with a large pole). Some would label me an ass for not just saying, “no further contact, thanks” but imagine what they’d say had I immediately returned Heidi’s phone call in the mood I was in. It was better to wait for later and I’m glad I did. That’s when the “crazy girlfriend like Betsie” idea hit me and I immediately found the situation funny. Once that occurred to me, I knew just how to handle it.

That was a true story, by the way. Betsie really was quite nuts.

At any rate, I detailed the ordeal on my blog (because I knew my friends and family would find it “très Josh”) so it’s only fair I laude Zendesk’s followup (and of course sensationalize that too).

It should be posted shortly, but I wanted to respond to you beforehand for two reasons. First, it’s just the right thing to do, and second, because I wanted to post my response to you as well.

So: thanks for following up and thanks for rethinking the frequency and nature of contact … and yes, “colorful” is a good word.

Regards,

– Josh

I felt it was only right to explain my position a bit just in case there were any hard feelings. So overall, I have good feelings about the folks at Zendesk. I hope they feel the same about me (Heidi? Bob? We cool?).

Maybe I’ll e-mail, call, then e-mail again once in awhile to see if they still love me.

Update: Oh man. I knew they killed them!

At the very end of last week, I started a one-month free trial with Zendesk, a web-based help desk a la FogBugz. I chose it for its simplicity and am so far happy with the system itself, even with a minor technical hiccup. It’s the crazy-girlfriend-like sales tactics that bug me a little (a lot).

I started the trial five days ago. Within a day or so, Heidi (we’ll call her) e-mailed me asking me how things were going. I honestly couldn’t answer – I’d only used it for a grand total of twenty minutes or so, spread out over a one-to-two-day period. I also wasn’t interested in conversing at the moment, so I ignored the e-mail.

In an all-too-frequent moment of customer service prescience, I was concerned that I’d be hounded, so I was happy to see an “opt out of further communications” link at the bottom of her e-mail. I clicked it and opted out, then deleted the message.

Yesterday – four days after starting my one month trial – I received a phone call from an unidentified number. I always screen unknown numbers, so I waited for the voice mail notification and listened. Who was it but Heidi, explaining she tried e-mailing me but hadn’t heard back. She reiterated her desire to know how I liked Zendesk.

As I’m listening to this voice mail with a mild bit of annoyance, I get an e-mail. From Heidi. She wanted to make sure I got her e-mail and voice mail … and wanted to know how I liked Zendesk.

Now, if you don’t know me well, it may shock you to hear I become annoyed easily and am quite vocal about it. I had to resist the urge to call her back and bitch her out for the incessant intrusion. She reminded me of a crazy ex-girlfriend I had in junior high school … when I had girlfriends.

Then I had another idea. Rather than lash out when asked what I thought, I related a relevant story. Here’s what I ended up sending Heidi (modified somewhat for clarity).

Heidi:

I’ll tell you my first impressions but I want you to think about it from my perspective as you read. But first, a tale of young love.

When I was in junior high school, I did the unthinkable: I got myself a girlfriend. Well, really, the girlfriend got me. We’ll call her Betsie. “Will you go with me?” Betsie asked, using the common phrase (at least in my part of the world). Oh, if only I had said no …

You see, Betsie was known to be “out there”. Didn’t bother me at the time; I like “out there”. She wrote me three notes a day. Long ones. Every evening she would keep me on the phone for hours. Being the typical teenage boy, I found this a bit excessive, but I did my best to keep up with the sheer volume. It was normal, right? To my credit, this went on for three weeks – practically a lifetime for a young romance. Several times, though, I’d have a bad day and just be content to talk a bit. Of course I would try to tell her this, but to Betsie, it was always taken as a prelude to a breakup.

At first, I would tell her I still loved her and nothing was wrong; I was just having a bad day. After awhile, the little things I did or didn’t do would trigger this insecurity. I began to feel like a captive, a slave to reply note writing, return phone calls, and constant reassurances.

Then it happened. When she asked me if I was going to break up with her for the 5143746253745th time, I hesitated. After all, by this time her fear was becoming a self-fulfilling prophesy. It was only the briefest of hesitations but it was enough for Betsie.

Her tone changed immediately. Suddenly she was deathly serious. Despite this she managed to make it sound almost nonchalant – perhaps it was her sigh – when she said, “I think if you would ever break up with me I’d kill myself.”

Wait, what?

I was thirteen … what would I do? Tell my parents? Tell hers? Yeah, right: “I made my girlfriend/your daughter want to kill herself. Thought you should know.” So I did the only thing sensible to a teenage boy: I kept it to myself.

This went on for awhile (a few days) until I finally realized she was doing it for attention. More to the point, she was doing it in a desparate attempt to keep her boyfriend. Ultimately I broke up with her. She’s still alive and well and now married to a man I must assume enjoys her quirks. She even invited me to her wedding a few years ago. I politely made an excuse and declined.

My point?

Nothing makes people want to break up more than an insane girlfriend/boyfriend.

I just started using Zendesk at the end of last week. I ignored your email partly because I had no opinion yet and partly because – and please don’t take this the wrong way – I just want to use the application and would like you guys to stay the hell out of my way unless I need you.

Like Betsie, however, you emailed, then you called (!!!), then emailed immediately thereafter to make sure I got your voice mail. All in less than a week of my starting the trial. That’s a bit … much.

So, there you have it: The jury is still out on Zendesk as a product, but I have to say, the insistent, voluminous “do-you-love-me?!?!” notes and calls are scaring me little. Especially after I opted out of your first email.

Simply put: Could you dial it back, please?

Now I’ll say I’m pretty sure I’ll convert to a paid account and stick with Zendesk. Unless something drastic happens to piss me off, I have no real complaints. It’s reasonably quick for a Ruby on Rails web app and it has the features I need without all the “our-way-or-no-way” required fields that annoyed me about FogBugz.

Rest assured, however, if they keep nagging me to tell them I love them, I’ll drop them like a Betsie.

Update: The saga continues here: Zendesk Second Impressions