Are your customers part of your Business Plan?
Sounds like a crazy question, doesn’t it? Well, I’ve been following an online saga over the weekend that makes me think that some entrepreneurs aren’t aware, or don’t care, about this simple premise.
I Want Sandy is an online scheduling and reminder service. Get any kind of information about daily “stuff” (appointments, things to remember, lists, reminders, etc.) into Sandy and she will not only kept track of them, she would send you timely digests and reminders.
The service, nicknamed IWS, was extremely popular in the online scheduling community. Although IWS had a number of competitors, the flexibility with which one could get information into the service was, I’m told, head and shoulders above her competition. Sandy was also integrated into some popular gateway services, like Jott and Google Calendar, making the service even more convenient and woven into the Web 2.0 fabric of (online) life.
So I was surprised when over the weekend I saw a post in one of the tech blogs I follow that I Want Sandy was shutting down. You can read the official announcement from the I Want Sandy CEO Rael Dornfest here. Basically, the IP was acquired by Twitterwith no intent to do anything with in the near future, Rael took a job in Twitter’s User Experience department (after working there as a consultant), and the servers keeping IWS and another of Rael’s services running, will be shut down December 8th.
I subscribed to the comments for the post, and got a regular stream of them throughout the weekend into today. While there are a wide range of comments both positive and negative, my unofficial sense is they are running around 40/60 positive/negative. Actually, that might be overly kind. The site that hosts IWS’s customer service is Get Satisfaction, an online service that let’s companies receive and respond to customer comment and inquires, while also providing crowd-sourcing help. The service allows everyone leaving a comment to rate their mood about the post. Rating are “happy”, “silly”, “indifferent” and “sad”. With right around 110 of the 230 people leaving comments indicating their mood, 74 of them rated their mood as “sad”.
Many of the comments were predictable on both ends of the spectrum, ranging from “what did you expect of a free service” to outright anger on the service being shut down with only two weeks notice. Since many of IWS’s users are presumed to be online natives, a large number took it in stride and actually complemented Rael on developing software that was so easy to use and was adopted by so many.
Many others however, were not so kind. There was an overwhelming sentiment that Rael was not just taking away a service that many had come to depend on (including a number of folks with ADD who said it helped them successfully take charge of their lives), but that a trust had been broken and responsibility had been abandoned. I highlight trust and responsibility as core entrepreneurial qualities from my recent survey. It was quite interesting to see these qualities come up in comments not directly concerned with entrepreneurship, but yet directed at an entrepreneur.
To be fair, it is hard to throw too many darts without acknowledging that we don’t know the full situation. The business dealings of a startup company are often complex and rarely make the light of day. So while I agree with the negative sentiment of the deal, I also know that there could be reasons in play that forced Rael’s hand that he would rather not share.
In fact there were a few commenters that said this move was a “success” for the startup and congratulated Rael both for the elegance of his software, but the acquisition by Twitter. I have a hard time with that sentiment though. I create, market and grow a company’s user base, then sell the IP to a company that doesn’t have any plans for it and shut the service down with two week’s notice and that’s a success? Not for any of the entrepreneurs I work with.
Whatever Rael’s reasons it ends up being very hard for me to put a positive spin on this. Even as one commenter, a company official rep remarked:
Wow.. I think the visceral outlashes here are a bit excessive. I understand that 2 weeks is a short time for transition, but given that Sandy is a Free Service that Rael developed on his own (He is the sole developer of the Product) I think he’s done a fine job. Given that Stikkit/IWS product absolutely no revenue for Rael and he’s funding the server maintenance costs out of his own pocket, I think a 2 week period is more than we should even expect.
another countered:
Rael, I think you’ve made a big stuff up. Despite how you frame it, this is a career lowlight for you. When you read the hundreds of complaints you’re going to receive, I do hope it gives you pause for thought. You seem like a lovely guy, but it’s obvious you’re blinkered to something extremely important. Now’s the time to get clued in to what you’re missing.
Whether or not people should put their trust in a free, web-based application, the fact is they do and they did in Sandy. What’s more, you know they did. You have betrayed that trust. I already pay for a Remember the Milk subscription and would have gladly done the same for Sandy. Yes, I would have paid for both because Sandy offered something unique.
Rael, thank you for Sandy. I do wish you every success for the future but on one condition: you learn the few home truths you’re currently blind to. If, however, you remain as blinkered in the future as you are now, then I hope you *don’t* make it big again. The people who have contributed to your success don’t deserve to be shafted a second time.
Now whether this was just a hobbyist programmer whose online experiment grew bigger than he was ready for, or an entrepreneur who betrayed the trust of his customer base, I suppose we’ll never know. But the previous commenter makes I think an extremely important point – if you offer a product or service that the market adopts, you have customers whether you want them or not. With those customers come expectations, including your commitment to them, a relationship built in part on implied trust, and a responsibility to continue to serve them.
So make sure your customers are part of your business plan. In fact, make sure your customers are central to your business plan. As much as they are sometimes are a pain – they are the ones keeping the lights on; and as much as we think they don’t care – they wouldn’t be sticking around if they didn’t.
Counterpoint
I was driving out to have lunch with my parents over the weekend. I was a bit early, so I drove around some old “stomping grounds” to see what had changed. I drove past a local company, East Manufacturing, that makes truck trailers. There parked in their front lot, was an older-looking trailer with a sign hanging from it:
East Manufacturing is proud to celebrate it’s 40th anniversary. This is the first trailer we ever built and it’s still in service
What kind of message does that send?
What do you think?
Was Rael’s company a success? Are free, online services truly that different with respect to customers and responsibility? Is the Web 2.0 space “buyer beware” or was this an isolated incident?
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As of late yesterday into today, the commenting has taken a turn directly into trust. Was trust something that was appropriate for customers to develop in with a free service? Did Rael break trust that he never promised to deliver? I’m finding the conversation thread a fascinating microcosm of customer relationship management and business operations issues in the context of online services and startup businesses.