Back in September we launched Smiley, an internal tool we built to measure customer happiness as it relates to our customer service and support.
Smiley has had a tremendous positive impact on our overall customer service. We’ve learned a lot about what it takes to make a customer happy. And our customers are happier as a result. As it goes, if you want to improve something, measure it.
Inside 37signals, everyone can see our customer service ratings. We have a dashboard that shows how we’re doing. It’s great. I look at the page a dozen times a day to see how we’re doing. When I pitch in on support I’m very conscious of my ratings. Knowing how you’re doing helps you do better.
Going public
However, we want to go even further. We want to be held to even higher standards of excellence when it comes to our customer service. So we’ve decided to expose our customer service ratings to the world. If you want to see how we’re doing, visit http://smiley.37signals.com. It’s a real-time scorecard of our last 100 ratings.
Please keep an eye on us and keep us honest. We’re working hard every day to try to make 100% of our customers happy.
Brian
on 11 Feb 11I love this idea and it’s practices like this one that gives me a ton of respect for you guys.
That said, you may want to consider a comparable tool for Sortfolio. As a paying subscriber, I sent an email to support on December 15th and never received any sort of reply.
DHH
on 11 Feb 11Brian, that’s not right. Please send me an email directly at [email protected] and I’ll take care of whatever problem you had!
Matt
on 11 Feb 11This is great.
I second the concern for Sortfolio – but that’s another topic ;)
Jake Webb
on 11 Feb 11@37signals
This is very ironic …
I assume this app would indicate a big frown from Groupon after just yesterday them firing Jason Fried off the border of directors.
Reason why I hear they let Jason go:
- Jason unwisely sticking to the mantra of never selling (turned down $6 BILLION from Google) and
- Approving what many site as the most controversial (and negative sales impacting) Super Bowl commercials ever.
JF
on 11 Feb 11Nice try Jake!
I’ve moved on to the advisory board where I can better serve Andrew and his product team. I served my time on the board of directors, but I’m not needed there any more. They need to make way for folks with a lot more experience running big companies (like Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks who they just added). It makes complete sense to me.
Serving on the BOD was a thrill and I’m thrilled they’ve asked me to stay on as an advisor in another capacity.
Last thing: I’m not sure if you’ve ever served on a board before, but one voice doesn’t make the decisions about “selling the company” or “running a superbowl ad”. A good board is one that’s made up of a variety of opinions. Groupon has a great board.
Jake Webb
on 11 Feb 11@DHH
Didn’t 37signals steal the exact design (and idea) of this Smiley system from one of your own readers.
Oh yeah, it can be read in your own blog comments from the linked article you posted above.
The original designer and implementor of this system wrote a blog post about how 37signals flat out stole his design and implementation.
Rob
on 11 Feb 11@Jake Web
What does it have to do with customer support??
Well done guys, thanks for sharing this with us and let’s hope that makes a positive impact on current and new customers.
Halloo Com
on 11 Feb 11Not sure how this thread took on such a negative turn.. personally I am a huge fan of 37signals and Smiley just proves that they are continuing to innovate not just with technology – but with their business culture!
Noooow…. when are you guys going to make this commercial for the rest of us exact-date-wise? We want to implement it on our sites as well.
Spencer Fry
on 11 Feb 11This is cool guys. Nice work.
Anonymous Coward
on 11 Feb 11Oh, it’s not a new product.
That confused me because I went to the web site looking to see how much it’d cost to use.
@Jake Webb
on 11 Feb 11tsk, tsk, tsk… What’s your beef
First, the thing with Jason and Groupon… who gives a shit... I’m sure Groupon would stand behind his contributions while being on the board.
Second, this thing about DHH stealing? Again, who gives a shit Even if they did get an idea from somewhere else (and I am not saying they did… cause I have no clue), 37s did not take some idea and turn it around as a product to sell and profit from. They made an internal product… big deal.
Pedro Corá
on 11 Feb 11Guys, this is awesome! Really nice work! :D
Adam
on 11 Feb 11Great implementation guys.
Keep on building great products. The Jakes will keep complaining about it, but it’s certainly not truly “your stuff” they’re complaining about. I’m sure it’s a bit deeper than that (i.e. themselves).
Brian
on 11 Feb 11@Jake – Haters gonna hate.
Hey guys, I hope my concern didn’t set an unfortunate tone and that I’m not lumped in with JW.
I’m not at all surprised to see DHH get back with me so quickly, I’ve already e-mailed him and let me say again that I have a ton of respect for 37 because of this very sort of practice and responsiveness.
Matej Hrescak
on 11 Feb 11@Jake Webb
That’s an old issue and already sorted out. Nobody stole anything, the idea is 1, no rocket science 2, worth nothing alone. Not to mention Smiley is not being sold, and maybe never will.
Oh, and the designer of Nicereply is me, not the guy with the blogpost, you must have misread something.
Anyway, kudos for this wonderful page guys! It shows that people like to show off their business culture and support quality, which is something we should focus on probably.
Hugo Baraúna
on 11 Feb 11Awesome! I can imagine a world where every company would do that, it would be so much better.
David Ulevitch
on 11 Feb 11What’s your support system? Is it Basecamp or something else?
Greg
on 11 Feb 11@37signals
On the Smiley web site it says,
Why don’t you include the ratings of ALL of your support tickets?
Are you implying that if I email support, and if the person assigned to my ticket just so happens to be a “support trainee” that my opinion/rating/satisfaction does not matter to be recording?
DHH
on 11 Feb 11Greg, you’re right. That caveat is a cop-out. I just removed it. All ratings will be counted whether they’re from a trainee or not.
JF
on 11 Feb 11What’s your support system? Is it Basecamp or something else?
We’re using Assistly and really liking it so far.
Jim Garvin
on 11 Feb 11Good idea, nice design, useful metric.
Plenty of companies don’t do this (or something like it) because they know they won’t like what they see. I was going to say it was “brave” of 37s, but I bet it actually didn’t take much courage at all. If you’re confident that you’ve shaped your business to value customer happiness above all else, and that spirit is shared by every team member, then this is just a sensible thing to do.
@37signals – is there a “reason” message associated with each rating? For instance, I’d love to be able to click on one of the ratings and see what the given reason behind it was.
Kudos, gents.
JF
on 11 Feb 11Jim: Yes, customers can leave a message when they leave a rating, but that message can contain personal information or confidential information (account info, etc) so we can’t share them here.
Michael
on 11 Feb 11Haha, banner day for fail criticisms here.
Neat idea!
Jim Garvin
on 11 Feb 11@JF I understand, that is a valid concern. Perhaps there’s still room for improvement here, though.
Idea: Add a checkbox that let’s people opt-in to making their message public on smiley.
Custom Ink, for example, shares uncensored customer reviews, and it works really well for them.
I expect results, Fried! Not excuses!
Renee
on 11 Feb 11Fascinating. So without sharing specifics, what kinds of events tend to generate unsmileys? If it’s an issue where you can’t help the customer but explain thoroughly, how do customers respond?
Anthony Cerra
on 11 Feb 11Hey Jason,
Put me down for a frowny face.
I sent you an email on Feb. 1 that you never replied to requesting a little help on my bootstrapped Chicago startup. I get that you’re a busy guy, but even a simple “Sorry, can’t do it” response would have sufficed – especially after spending $1,000 on the master class in November.
I’m not mad, just disappointed.
Anthony
JF
on 11 Feb 11Renee: Most of the frowns we get are related to feature requests. People want something we can’t immediately deliver and they get upset. I understand the feeling. It’s still our job to make them happy even if we can’t give them what they want right now.
Drew
on 11 Feb 11@Jake Webb
That’s ridiculous if you think one person can sway the board for a decision such as a 6B buyout. Boardroom policies are a process that stem from a discussion and interaction, not something as simple as a tally of votes. And they don’t just happen during meetings, either…
Jake Holman
on 11 Feb 11Interesting.
Particularly interested in the wording being used on the email itself.
For example, you ask customers to “rate my reply”. A reply is only a small part of a ticket, a support interaction. Are you actually tracking individual reply ratings, or is it just semantics and you’re actually doing it per ticket?
What’s the thinking behind the median choice? Questioning the usefulness of knowing about, “OK” particularly when you’ve already set the bar with “definitely could have been better”, which essentially means those with more scrutiny will choose the median even though they were happy with the response.
JF
on 11 Feb 11Jake: We rate per ticket and use the last rating since that’s the one closest to resolution.
Re: middle choice… I generally don’t think things are black or white when it comes to human interaction. Forcing someone to the extremes would probably put people in positions they don’t agree with (I wasn’t really happy, but I wasn’t unhappy, so… Umm… I’ll pick happy I guess even though I wasn’t really happy”?)
So we wanted to capture that middle ground and learn a thing or two about what makes someone satisfied but not entirely happy.
Vojto
on 11 Feb 11To me personally “our product is so good that you don’t need support” appeals more than “our support is awesome”. But that’s just me.
Berserk
on 11 Feb 11Only time support isn’t needed is if you don’t have enough customers. Got nothing to do with the awesomeness of the product.
Matt Trifiro
on 11 Feb 11Wow. This is a milestone event in the world of customer service. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like this done before. It reminds me when I first started seeing companies allow reviews of their products, good and bad, to appear on their own website. A public-facing “smiley score” may become service delivery equivalent. Bravo.
37 Signals has always been on my short list for technology and product leadership, but now you’re kicking ass with service delivery and transparency. May every customer buy from companies like yours.
Special props for Michael and his team for earning all those smiles on the front line.
Sam Bell
on 11 Feb 11Basic. Simple. Executed. Clever. Nice one & good luck with evolving it & enjoying what you discover. Sam
Anonymous Coward
on 11 Feb 11@Berserk
Google seems to do okay without providing Support and I think they are just a little bit bigger than 37signals.
Vojto
on 11 Feb 11Berserk
Yeah sure, I didnt mean it literally.
I still feel like they are just showing off with their support instead of putting that effort into something useful. Of course, its appealing to dumb users who are used to call hotlines instead of thinking, and Im pretty sure most of users are like that, but not me, I want product that works.
Koichi
on 12 Feb 11daw, when I saw the word “public” I was hoping you were making this available to the public to use. Darn, looks so nice! :/
Elliot Anderson
on 12 Feb 11@Jake Webb,
The link you posted accusing 37signals of stealing ideas seems to be dead.
Don’t you think it’s a little ironic that the headline post at this very moment is: “3 Features everyone must borrow from Facebook”?
Vojto
on 12 Feb 11@Elliot
Ok that happens to be my website, I didnt make Nicereply, Im just the guy who told them theyre charging too much.
Then 37signals made the same thing in a day, and I was pointing out 500$/m is too much. (biggest plan).
There wasnt a word about copying, and also the authors didnt accuse anyone.
As you can see from my deadline I believe there is nothing wrong borrowing ideas as I called it, as long as were talking about simple ideas. Copying whole concept is something different.
37signals did not copy from Nicereply, they did not copy the whole concept (nicereply is a saas) they did use the same idea, but come on, theres no origil author or anything.
If you really wanna know, this happens to me all the time that I come up with idea and see it somewhere else the next day. On one of my projects I came up with live comments, implemented it as experimental feature with nodejs (doesnt really work) and a few days later I see facebook has the same thing.
Should Iaccuse Facebook fior stealing my idea?
And again, no one is accusing anybody, its just what you trolls made up.
Berserk
on 12 Feb 11I’m pretty sure that Google’s customers (as in paying) expect support.
E.g. Google Apps for Business has 99.9% uptime guarantee SLA and 24/7 support.
@Vojto: As someone who very rarely uses support I certainly agree with that point.
Ian
on 12 Feb 11I thought that 37s doesn’t care what customers think…
Dan Boland
on 12 Feb 11FYI, there’s a typo in the example support email—says “within the each of the project templates” instead of “within each of the project templates.”
Anonymous Coward
on 12 Feb 11@Anthony Cerra
Maybe that’s Jason Fried’s way of “Getting Real”.
Definitely ass-hole’sh though.
Anthony Cerra
on 13 Feb 11@Anonymous Coward,
My comment was more of a knee-jerk reaction to the situation than a statement about Jason’s character. After thinking about it for a little bit I realized that he’s running a multi-million dollar business and heavily involved with Groupon, a multi-billion dollar business. My email probably fell through the cracks. It happens. One thing I’m learning (the hard way) about entrepreneurship is that you can’t take things personally. What does it accomplish?
Advice_Man
on 14 Feb 11You know, this is truly brilliant. May I offer a suggestion? Simple as it sounds, wouldn’t it be nice if when you moused over one of the faces, a one line comment would be displayed in a speech bubble?
Just a thought.
JF
on 14 Feb 11Simple as it sounds, wouldn’t it be nice if when you moused over one of the faces, a one line comment would be displayed in a speech bubble?
We have that on our side, but these comments can sometimes contain sensitive personal account-related information. We’d have to review/approve each comment to make sure it doesn’t violate anyone’s privacy. That turns something automated into something manual—it’s just not worth the extra effort for minimal return.
JD
on 14 Feb 11It’s important to make the distinction between “reviews” and what we’re doing here with Smiley. Remember these are real technical support problems. They’re not product reviews or ebay seller ratings.
geordie
on 14 Feb 11Well, I’m impressed that Jason and DHH are all over this thread, and I for one, am a huge fan of Basecamp, 37 Signals in general and Rework. They’ve got great business minds, and have a great concept in their software, it’s helped transform our business as we’re a small company with people spread out all over the globe, and speaking two different languages.
I just wanted to give a shout out, because I see a lot of negative comments, I’ve always been impressed with how fast 37s gets back to me, and I have found their products to be brilliant.
Big fan – look forward to watching where you guys go next.
This discussion is closed.