All this chittah-chattah

		wSteve Portigal
		I am the founder of Portigal Consulting, a boutique firm that brings together user research, design and business strategy. Portigal Consulting helps clients to discover and act on new insights about how their customers work, play, shop, entertain, eat, and live their lives around products and services.

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		wWednesday, April 12, 2006
		37 Signals jumps the shark (if they hadn't already) While we appreciate customers who take the time to write in and tell us what they want, the way people phrase things often leads to raised eyebrows. Every feature that’s missing is essential, a must-have, and the fact that it’s missing is killing someone. Yet the #1 thing that people like about our software is how simple it is. To give you an idea of what it’s like to be on the receiving end, here are some excerpts from recent 37signals support emails and forum posts The exercepts are meant to ridicule the customers/users/people who contact them. For being too intense or too clueless or in whatever way just not as cool as the folks at 37 Signals. This is a company that makes software but also wants to teach the world about making great products. I'm not sure that their products are really that great, but their credibility for teaching anyone how to do anything is nil once they start using the bully pulpit of their own blog to mock people - customers! And of course, there's an ensuing pile-in on the comments "hyuk-hyuk, people are morons." It's too easy to get your pals to agree with that sort of thing, and ultimately it reveals contempt for the wrong people. That's a critical failure at the root of what they are setting out to do. Update: several other bloggers agree with me Technorati: mock, ridicule, 37signals, contempt, teaching, design, software, great+products posted by Steve Portigal at 11:25 AM

Comments:

whither the 'empathy for the user'... your insight is apt.

# posted by

niti bhan : 1:20 PM

I would have to agree as well:

http://blog.mattwalters.net/permalink/14/

# posted by

Matt : 10:24 AM

I'm the author of the post at Signal vs. Noise.

We didn't ridicule/mock our customers with this post nor did we intend to. We used our customers own words. We quoted directly. If you feel that quoting someone directly is equivalent to mocking them...well, we disagree.

Fwiw, we don't think the requests were stupid and we do value customer feedback. We showed theses comments so people can see the different realities that exist for individual customers vs. companies vs. the customer base as a whole.

Why share this info at all? The truth is these sorts of conversations are happening all the time in companies all over. Is it better that they be hidden from the public or is it better to have an open, honest dialogue about them?

# posted by

Matt : 8:52 AM

All This ChittahChattah