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May 15, 2004
MovableType Moves...
The Sky is Not Falling (Jeremy Zawodny's blog). In a good example of how to respond when customers are mad at you, Ben and Mena were smart ot essentially come off of their big price increase. The subterfuge of pretending that it was just confusion about the license is smart and will get people back on board. It's better to be confusing than evil and they take good advantage of that. Of course as Allen points out in comments, the absolutely best course is to say, "heck, we're new to this, we made a mistake, this was not our intent, we continue to do what customers want." But, its a rare thing for a company to do that. BTW, the folks that think loyalty goes both ways, it shows that you can have a loyal base, but if you raise prices without warning or signalling (particularly when going from free then to $600, then to $150, then to $50 which is basically what they done), you can create a sense of mistrust. Also, I'm sure it is not lost on folks that MovableType can dramatically change licensing at a drop of a hat, so the smarter folks will realize llocking in with them is a one way street. That is once locked in, who knows what Sixapart will do. The lessons: # In a drag race, the loyalty of your customer is super important. Don't break their trust and they will love you. One test I used to run, was to insert the words, "Customers asked us..." in front of every sentence in a press release to see if it was true. If not, really wonder if you are doing the right thing. # Once you have made a mistake fix it fast. Best case is to apologize for confusion and say here is what we meant rather than just say we are stupid. # Disobey the standard price points at your peril. That is $49.95 for consumer stuff or $9.95/month. And for corporate, $495-$995 for small buisness/departmental or $49/user/month. And for big enterprises $4995-9995. # Be aggressive on upgrade policy (actually they still haven't done that). Reward your loyal users, they are the recommenders. That's the real sin of the Movable Type drag race, not to understand the standard price point and also to surprise your loyal customersPosted by rich at May 15, 2004 10:34 AM
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Comments
You're right, the absolutely best response would be to be honest and say, hey we're new at this we screwed up and we'll change as needed.
Hard to imagine Ben and Mena doing this given the tone of the letters they are putting out. Sounds very corporate ironically.
Other sad thing is that it is pretty clear they never pre-tested the whole pricing scheme. What a way to beta test.
Posted by: Rich Tong at May 15, 2004 08:16 PM
Kind of surprised that you guys would applaud using "subterfuge" to cover up a mistake. Better instead to admit that you might not have thought through all the issues, but listened to customer feedback and responded quickly.
Posted by: Allen at May 15, 2004 03:32 PM
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