8 Nov 1997 – There are heaps of useful information on the Adaptec web site, though if you start out at the main home page it’s hard to find the CD-R/CD-RW stuff. If you want to look at it, try this URL: http://www.adaptec.com/support/cdrec [link no longer works]

It gives you rundowns (not always complete or consistent, but better than I’ve found elsewhere) on Adaptec’s software. Perhaps more important, it gives basic information about which software supports which hardware, which filetypes are supported in which operating systems, and like that. When the time comes, that’s also where they post patches, upgrades, and such. The honcho is a Dierdre something who has a presence in the newsgroups as well and has demonstrated a great capacity to ignore the flack, keep her cool, remain cheerily offhand, and focus on constructive substance. We need more Dierdres.

Having just started a job with a PR agency (I’m a former magazine editor), I’m acutely aware of the value of the abovementioned qualities. Please keep up the good work.

Subject: Adaptec in trouble ?
20 Nov 1997
From: nobody@REPLAY.COM (Anonymous)
Newsgroups: alt.philips.cdr.discussion

Are things going bad for Adaptec Software Products ? Why is it that “Adaptec CD-R (Deirdre’ Straughan) adaptec_cdr@wnt.dc.lsoft.com” (who also monitors a mailing-list for Adaptec Software Products) in all his replay’s includes a URL to the Adaptec Software Products site on the WWW.

I have heard about direct marketing, but is lurking around in usenet trying to drag CDR-users with some problem’s to a commercial-site not somewhat overdone ? Is this the way to stay alive for a company ?

Some research:

Author: “Adaptec CD-R (Deirdre’ Straughan)” <adaptec_cdr@wnt.dc.lsoft.com> 179 unique articles posted.

Number of articles posted to individual newsgroups (slightly skewed by cross-postings):

• 68 comp.publish.cdrom.hardware
• 46 comp.publish.cdrom.software
• 22 alt.comp.periphs.cdr
• 21 alt.cd-rom
• 4 alt.2600.warez
• 2 comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.cd-rom
• 1 alt.binaries.warez
• 1 alt.philips.cdr.discussion

All these posting’s contain one or more links to the Adaptec Software Products site on the WWW. I doubt if the advice given by this person is objective.

Subject: Thanx
Sat, 29 Nov 1997

Dear Ms. Straughan,

Just a few lines to thank you and your company for an excellent product in CD Creator Deluxe. One of the contributing factors in buying the program was seeing your intelligent and informative responses almost daily in the various newsgroups. It’s rare these days to see such dedication and interest given to the average consumer. Keep up the good work, and may I take this opportunity to wish you and the team a happy and prosperous New Year.

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My Technical Writing Discussion List: Early Experiences in Online Customer Communications On the Usenet: Supporting a Company in an Online Public Forum Subscriber Comments About the Adaptec Discussion List

I’ve spent probably half of my working life answering email. And therein lie a number of tales…

Some people were convinced I had to be mailbot, because I answered so quickly. As I told them: “If we had a mailbot this good, we’d be selling that instead of CD-R!”

The Unexpected Response

It seems that when people write to a general address at a company, they don’t necessarily expect a response, and are surprised when they get one.

I often received extremely abusive messages from people who were angry about products, service, or whatever. I usually managed to respond calmly and politely. Most of the time, the second email from these people was a great deal politer, and a few even apologized for their previous harsh tone. On two memorable occasions, the answer was: “Ohmygod, I’m so sorry! I never thought a real human being would read that!”

Which is a sad statement about how some companies handle their email – how has it happened that this medium, which was supposed to help companies communicate with customers, is routinely used so badly that, when customers write, they don’t even expect a reply?

Bringing in the Big Guns

Perhaps this is why many people, in their very first contact with a company, come in with  bazookas blazing: “If you don’t make me a happy customer, I’m going to sic the Better Business Bureau, the Federal Trade Commission, and a pack of lawyers on you.” Or “I’m going to write to all the major magazines about how rotten you are.” As if they had to greet me with a kick in the teeth in order to get my attention.

Again, many of these people backed off as soon as they got any sort of polite and semi-competent response from the company. But it makes for a tiring workday, being barraged with abuse from people who assume that you won’t help them unless they’re nasty.

Perhaps we’d all suffer less stress if we started from the assumption that the people whose job it is to help us actually want to do so, and only escalate to threats if they fail to take that job seriously.

There were two types of aggressives who made me laugh:

• “I’m going to put up a nasty website about you. You obviously don’t understand the power of the Internet!” (The second sentence is an actual quote that I remember very clearly – I received that message a few years ago, but, even then, trying to tell me about the power of the Internet was a clear case of ‘trying to teach Granny to suck eggs.’)
• “I’m a journalist and write for [blank] magazine – you’d better make me happy or your name will be mud.” (Not an exact quote, but the gist was clear.) These were both amusing and irritating. By the time I left Roxio, my own newsletters had a combined circulation of over 190,000. I think that qualifies me as a well-read journalist, no? But I always bit my tongue and handed those guys over to the PR folks,  who would give them whatever special treatment they deserved.

Myself, I never treated anyone special. Or rather, I treated everyone the same. I truly felt that all customers deserved the same consideration, and all of their problems and gripes should, as far as possible, be resolved.

This runs counter to the current wisdom of “Customer Relationship Management,” which says that you should use fancy software to determine who your most valuable customers are (those who have bought the most and are most likely to buy again), and make sure that they are kept happiest (offer them special deals and so on – the same principle as frequent-flyer mileage).

Many times, the sheer fact of my answering the email kindly, even if all I could say was that I couldn’t help, reversed the customer’s attitude towards the company and “saved the day.”

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SxSWi Report – Social Media: Connecting with Customers Communicating with Your Customers Fanmail (I’m Blushing) Discussion List: Early Experiences in Online Customer Communications

“People want to discuss your product or service online. If you don’t give them a way to do it, someone else will.”
User to User Support by Derek M. Powazek – on WebTechniques

The Adaptec discussion list was created in about 1996 as a way for users of Adaptec CD-R software to help each other. It was actively moderated, meaning that every message was approved by a moderator (initially, me) before being posted to the whole list. This took a lot of time, but spared the community some of the worst aspects of the Usenet (trolls, flamers, spammers, obscenity), and ensured that discussion stayed on topic and didn’t get personal. There were clearly delineated policies about what would and would not be posted. There were complaints from time to time about “censorship,” but these always simmered down with the clearly expressed majority opinion that active moderation was desirable for the list. We actually censored very little, allowing all comments, no matter how negative, about the company and its policies and products. As long as people didn’t rant on repetitively or attack each other, we let them post – if anything, we erred on the side of leniency, and other list participants would let us know when they had had enough of a ranter.

The list was widely held to be an extremely useful forum for help and support with all aspects of CD recording. However, in email-only format and with a high level of activity (up to 75 messages a day!),  it could be a bit much for ordinary mortals. So people began to request a weekly newsletter as an alternative – and they loved it.

In 2002, Roxio replaced the email-format discussion list with Web-based discussion groups.

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Fanmail (I’m Blushing) EMail Encounters: Anecdotes of a Professional Life Online On the Usenet: Supporting a Company in an Online Public Forum Subscriber Comments About the Adaptec Discussion List