I’ve been delving into the dizzying chaos of RSS feeds and php and MySQL and news aggregation and the alarming, constantly shifting sands of nightly-updated open-source software (the promising toddler that is Gregarius). In researching my project, I’m trying to come up with some amateur kludges on my own server to demonstrate what I’m on about, because the people I’m going to be selling my idea to, in the main, aren’t renowned for their innovative technical know-how, and many of them, I imagine, won’t even be online.
But, already, I know there are companies I’d like to do business with, if I possibly could, such as FeedBurner and IeInternet. Since August, when this blog started, I learned, the hard way, just how new the technology is around feeds, and especially podcasting. Everyone is making it up as they go along. Because they have to. There are seemingly two ways of dealing with this uncertainty – either be honest with customers, and say “we’re doing our best, we’re sorry it’s not working, and we are doing x, y and z to progress it. Thank you for your patience” or to ignore customers and try and figure out the problems without allowing them to distract you. I’ve been at the receiving end of both attitudes and it amazes me how short-sighted the latter attitude is, and how prevalent. Through Feedburner’s excellent support forums I’ve learned just how powerful an effect a collectively held positive attitude towards customers can have. For months they have responded to my support queries with patience and honesty, and I haven’t even been a paying customer. It inspires such loyalty that I decided I would buy something from them today almost because it didn’t feel right that they weren’t getting any money from me. Bizarre, huh?
Perhaps I’m old school.
