I do front-line support for many of our products. Partly because we're small, partly because it's important for me to get a real understanding of what users are saying.
What I have discovered is that users come in being theatrically angry. They greatly exaggerate the extent to which they are affected by problems (verified in logs), they say that they are in an emergency situation with a dying relative and need support NOW, they say they will make a bunch of bad press for the product, a few of them openly extort, death threats, etc. Maybe years of AT&T have trained them to behave badly? I'm not really sure.
Anyway, when I respond to support requests as the owner of the company, a person who has both the technical competence and business authority to actually solve the problem, not some support drone somewhere, the tone changes completely. I've actually had customers apologize to me.
So yeah, the pictures probably seem over the top, but you're probably the type of person who is polite and reasonable when they e-mail someone for support :-) Peldi has probably gotten some cranky e-mails before about downtime, and this is probably the "ward off the death threats" page.
I do front-line support for many of our products. Partly because we're small, partly because it's important for me to get a real understanding of what users are saying.
What I have discovered is that users come in being theatrically angry. They greatly exaggerate the extent to which they are affected by problems (verified in logs), they say that they are in an emergency situation with a dying relative and need support NOW, they say they will make a bunch of bad press for the product, a few of them openly extort, death threats, etc. Maybe years of AT&T have trained them to behave badly? I'm not really sure.
Anyway, when I respond to support requests as the owner of the company, a person who has both the technical competence and business authority to actually solve the problem, not some support drone somewhere, the tone changes completely. I've actually had customers apologize to me.
So yeah, the pictures probably seem over the top, but you're probably the type of person who is polite and reasonable when they e-mail someone for support :-) Peldi has probably gotten some cranky e-mails before about downtime, and this is probably the "ward off the death threats" page.