A lot of companies think of customer service at the high-level or grand scale. Help systems, Call centers, Infrastructure, etc. Running Beanstalk and Newsberry, I do as much as possible at the individual level as possible. It’s where customer service really counts. Deciding to use Campfire chat for support has been one of the best moves for us, despite the mishaps. We offer direct access, and in turn, obtain direct feedback from our customers.
We also try to be as honest and transparent as possible. Just today a customer asked how the new deployment feature was coming. It’s taken a lot longer than we expected and many people are waiting for it. I could have easily said “It’s almost ready” to keep him waiting. Instead, I wanted to get him excited and let him know we’re working hard. Nothing shows this better than giving a sneak peek at what is coming. So, I grabbed some screen shots of the new tools and uploaded them to campfire. Now he knows what to expect, and more important, knows that we are really working hard to make things happen for our customers.
Transparency is just as important on the positive notes as they are for the negative.
3 Comments
So, not being personally familiar with the way hosted SVN services handle this deployment stuff… is it just for FTP-based uploads, or can it tie in with the trunk’s Capistrano recipes as well?
Justin Reese — May 14, 2008, 11:57 pm
Oop, just realized that was a bit off-topic. And so: I do want to give you guys props for the customer service. As I’ve mentioned to you before, that’s what’s kept me fighting for Beanstalk within my company. You guys are incredibly attentive, and that counts.
Justin Reese — May 14, 2008, 11:58 pm
No problem, Justin. For now, deployment will only be based on S/FTP. We will surely work on more robust options later, since we use Capistrano and CruiseControl internally.
Chris
Chris Nagele — May 15, 2008, 10:50 am
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