Someone is dragging my side project on reddit. I've responded. Was it a bad idea?
As the title says. I let down a customer on roastmylandingpage.com and now he's dragging me. Any thoughts on how to handle this: https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/g8f83f/psa_dont_use_roast_my_landing_page_consulting/
I don't want to create more drama but I also want the opportunity to defend myself. What are your thoughts on how I've replied?
Edit update: You guys are right. I was defensive when it was my opportunity to be graceful. I have removed my argumentative reddit posts, and offered him his roast for free. Thanks for some tough advice IH, it's appreciated.
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You came off as quite hostile there. It also seems like you commented on something from his post history, and talked about the wrong unhappy user?
Thank you. I edited the post. You are right.
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You’re not just being factual, you’re being defensive. It comes off like you’re trying to “prove” the customer wrong. That’s a fight that, most of the time, even if you win, you lose. It’s not worth it.
The fact that you even delved into the commenter’s post history is telling.
Just say “sorry it didn’t match your expectations, refund is on its way and I’ll try better next time”. You will leave a much better impression on potential customers.
Thank you.
I feel like people commenting here are making businesses for too long and can't look at it from the users perspective.
I already posted a comment on what went wrong. Go find it.
Now I have noticed that you DID post apology note. I will comment why it was badly written.
"Olly here from roastmylandingpage.com"
That's how marketing texts and newsletters begin. It's how marketing companies communicate, not how people communicate. You should write from a more personal standpoint. Furthermore, giving url to your website just comes off as if you are trying promote yourself again.
I would just go with "Hey, Olly here, I am the creator of X" or something like that.
"I'm sorry your roast wasn't returned within 24 hours"
You don't give ANY explanation why that happened. Did you get overwhelmed with requests? Did you usually respond the day after and there was simply a miscommunication? What happened? Even to me it's still not very clear. You site DOES indicate 24h response.
"I've set things up to ensure that doesn't happen again."
What exactly did you do? How did you improve the flow? It's the same when big corpos write "we will look into it". It means "we will just pretend we are doing something, until everyone forgets". You have to be concrete and precise to show that you took his criticism seriously.
"I previously replied in a more combative style as I was upset. I am sorry I was not more graceful."
It's okay, but it's still a bit impersonal. It sounds like a canned apology that you would hear in TV from a celebrity.
First, I would acknowledge that your behavior (searching users reddit history) was unacceptable. Second I would give some more background why did you react that way. I would play up the fact that you are a solo owner (if you are) or that you have just stared this company at it was a particularly stressful time for you. At this point I would just go as humble as possible, with showing some human side.Don't try to be professional! Try to be human.
THAT BEING SAID. At this point I would just leave this thread be. It's just pointers how to relate to your customers in the future and communicate with them.
I only skimmed your post so this is kind of general, but most of the time, if your customer is taking the time to complain about something, it's your fault. Even if it's a misunderstanding, it's your fault for not preventing a potential headache and distraction to your business.
But the good thing about this is that it's easy to solve problems because when you look at things strictly from a business standpoint, you simply make decisions based what will have the best financial impact on your company. Which is much less emotionally draining. Your energy is the single most powerful tool you have an an entrepreneur so don't waste it.
In your current situation, if you calculate the time you've wasted thinking about and dealing with the situation, time you could have spent growing your business, it's easy to see that you should have refunded the person as fast as humanly possible so you can get back to the more important stuff...like the latest IH posts.
One thing I can promise you is that as a business owner you will have lots of things to stress about so when possible, you don't want to waste your limited energy/stress/tolerance on small things like this.
Thank you! That is such a refreshing take on the situation. I was frustrated because I had just spent $200 on Reddit Ads. But you are totally right about my approach. The situation has left me drained and less focused - and I need to move forward. It's a really important lesson for me.
It might not feel this way initially but the $200 spent on ads shouldn't affect how you interact with users.
Keep in mind that your actions and behaviors will be scrutinized by potential customers, employees, and maybe even competitors, from here on out so anytime you're about to deal with any situation out of the ordinary, take 5 minutes to calm down and ask yourself how someone like Obama would deal with the situation, before you act. This won't help if you're a dumb guy but it will help if you're just new at whatever it is your doing.
And since most of these situations aren't in person but over email, we have the rare and lucky opportunity to make ourselves look like rockstars every single time...so use "hindsight is 20/20" to your advantage. You don't get to do this in person!
You will find that the more you think about "editing" your response to the situation, you will usually find increasingly clever ways to deal with any given matter....so keep this in mind and try not to waste too much time perfecting everything because response time has a huge impact on things as well. you'll figure out the best way to respond to most things pretty quickly.
Thank you, another great response and good food for thought. I should expect more of myself, and be more mindful of how I present myself online. Especially when, as you say, I have the opportunity to think things through more.
I went through the reddit post and also checked your website. I think the main issue here was the fact that he expected the delivery within 24 hours as per your website that says
"All sent back within 24 hours."
Perhaps you can clarify your signup process a bit more and mention that it is 24 hours AFTER your have the first contact/conversation with them ? That is what you said on the reddit post.
Some people are impatient. They not necessarily bad people. I have had many clients who get impatient especially with vague SLAs and timelines. It is better to be more clear to reduce ambiguity and confusion.
In your signup process, either add more time for delivery and clearly show a success message saying "Thank you for signing up. We will be in touch within 24 hours to discuss". Something like that ?
And obviously when you pay real money to unknown business and you don't receive ANY reply after 24 hours you can simply assume you have been scammed.
But if OP responded to this thread with "Hey, I just sent your money back. We have so much requests that waiting times are a bit longer now, I will make sure that before you pay on my website, you get accurate estimate of when you can expect the review" things would be probably fine. You can easily play up that you are still in beta/indie phase and you just got overwhelmed a bit.
As far as I understand he instead started going through users reddit history, which is probably the creepiest thing possible.
Imagine you pay money on unknown website, you can't get it back AND it's owner starts to spy what are you doing on reddit.
Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad.
At this point I would go with apology, both in public and in DM, explanation why emotions got to the better of you and your plan how are you going to fix a situation (remove 24h text from landing, put estimates of delivery before user paying, always greet him with initial email confirming that his order is being processes etc.)
There are details missing here.
But I agree with you that I should not have creeped on his profile.
Hey, I am not excluding the option that he is just very toxic.
If that's the case, simply move on. :) People have short memory, they will not think about that incident for long.
It was an interesting lesson also for me, to always be as clear in communication with the client as possible.
Agreed! I think I got carried away with the informal nature of the service / brand and need to remember how worried people are about spending their money wisely.
This comment was deleted 6 years ago.
If you let someone down, own it. However, feeding a troll only keeps it around. Getting into a pissing contest on reddit is only going to damage your rep in the end. My advice is to take the higher road, stay true to your service and don’t feed the trolls.
@c0nsilience Yep, owned it, gave the receipts. But now my reply is downvoted and no one can see it. Will move on now.
It's a real shame as I've had to stop all Reddit paid ads because it's ridiculous to run them when someone is badmouthing your product.
If you advertise on reddit prepare to get ripped. People on reddit are ruthless. I wouldn't take it personally just know that you're advertising to pitbulls not labs so if you disappoint someone they will go in on you and share it with the world.
Thank you
What I paid attention to in that thread were some of the positive accolades given to you toward the end of it. The positive will far outweigh the negative, but the negative always spreads so much faster! Keep on keeping on. 👍
Will do 💪
@olly I always come out as too defensive, too aggressive, etc. I'm surprised by entrepreneurs that say "the community is amazing, everybody is so helpful" because I rarely feel helped, often attacked.
The thing that helped me the most was the book "Non-Violent Communication". It allowed me to go from someone attacking my product, to someone praising my product, just by communicating with them and applying the techniques from that book without much sophistication. I wrote about it here: https://pupeno.com/2016/03/07/using-non-violent-communication-for-business/
Thank you, I've ordered it to my Kindle
It's a customer from hell but the rule is to be uniformly positive no matter what they say. You're not really being positive for his sake but for all the other people with no emotions involved who are just reading through things and trying to decide who's being more reasonable. So basically think it, but don't say it. Sucks but that's kind of how things work. Also haven't checked your site out but if you really aren't asking people for a URL right after they pay, that either needs to be fixed or the e-mail needs to be automated and arrive instantly.
Thank you
I think the strongest response is something along the lines of, "I'm really sorry you had this experience. I investigated and discovered that X happened because of Y, so I've updated the app to make sure X doesn't happen again. "
If you can't do that, then the next best is to acknowledge the problem and your plan to work on it.
You're right, thank you.
if you have not already watched the Roger Stone documentary on Netflix you should check it out. He talks about how he advises responding when being attacked. You may disagree with him and his tactics but the responses that he suggests politicians give to attacks works with customers in my opinion especially ones who are trying to troll you.
Never defend. As soon as you defend yourself you lose. There are constructive ways to navigate trolls. Going on the defensive is a mistake.
@ryanoskey229 Thanks, I am going to take a look. Sounds like my type of thing.
Opinions ain't facts. Let it be.
Don't respond to trolls.