The service that hosts this blog is called Typepad. Apparently they've been having some technical problems, and some users have not been able to use the service to post to their blogs or whatever. So I get an email from them today, apologizing for the problems, informing me of the upgrades to their hardware, and offering the following:
By default, you will receive a credit for 15 free days of TypePad service. To get this credit you don't have to do anything; we will just credit your account.
That said, we recognize that customers have had different experiences with the service, so we want to give you the opportunity to choose more, or even less compensation. If you click the link below, you'll get a screen that offers you the following choices:
While the performance issues caused me some inconvenience I mainly found the service acceptable last month.
Give me 15 free days of TypePad.The performance issues made it very difficult for me to use the service on multiple occasions during the month.
Give me 30 free days of TypePad.The performance issues affected me greatly, making my experience unacceptable for most of the month.
Give me 45 free days of TypePad.I really wasn't affected and feel I got the great service I paid for last month.
Thank you for the offer, but please don't credit my account.
Then the email has a link that sends you directly to the page where you elect the compensation you believe you should receive for their "less than stellar performance". I elected to receive no compensation for two reasons: 1) I really wasn't affected, and I have a problem taking things I don't deserve; and 2) I find it very cool that they offered their customers a variety of choices of compensation, and were willing to accept it if every single one of us asked for 45 free days of Typepad. I don't know how many millions of Typepad customers Six Apart has, but let's say everyone has the $8.95/month service and there are 10 million customers and everyone took the 45 free days: I'm extremely mathematically impaired but that's giving away about 13 and a half million dollars right?
Given all the terrible customer services stories you see in the news and on the web, with people getting very little remedy other than a "sorry", if that, I like what Typepad is doing. It made me feel like they gave a crap about their service, and gave enough of a crap about me that they want to give me some choice as to what would resolve the problem. Granted, I wasn't terribly affected and there may be customers for whom 15-45 free days is not enough compensation. But I'm guessing for most of us, the gesture alone went a long way.
Tag: marketing