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In an interview with ZDNet.co.uk's Rupert Goodwins, Skype's COO says the company is making focused moves to improve the customer experience and service
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In the second of our two-part interview, Skype's chief operating officer, Scott Durchslag, tells ZDNet.co.uk's Rupert Goodwins that the company recognises it has come under fire for the quality of its dealings with users and has made moves, such as taking on more staff, in response.
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Talkback
Rupert, that was really a good effort at having a meaningful interview, and asking some of the important questions. I think the nonsense and evasiveness that Durchslag gave for answers speaks volumes about what is really happening (or not happening):
- He says that they have results from a survey of 10,000 Skype Beta 4 users, whereas Skype's <a href="http://share.skype.com/sites/en/2008/10/skype_4_beta_2_for_windows.html">Mike Bartlett</a> says it was either 15,000 or 40,000 users, and the <a href="http://skypejournal.com/2008/09/skype-40-beta-2-available-wednesday.html">Skype Cheerleaders</a> say that it was 45,000 users. It's pretty obvious that the word from Skype PR on this was: "Pick a big number that you like".
- He says that Skype has "recently" doubled the size of their customer support staff. Oddly enough, that was the same answer he gave in a comment on my <a href="http://community.zdnet.co.uk/blog/0,1000000567,10008882o-2000498448b,00.htm#comments">blog</a> back in July, and we still haven't seen any improvement.
- Your question about the silly "330 million registered users was extremely good - and elicited the most telling response, I thought. Basically, "pick a number, any number. If we can't dazzle you with that one, let me try to dazzle you with a lot of others. We can hit you with so many numbers that no one can debunk them all".
- Likewise, your question about Mac and Linux users being left behind (now two major releases behind) was extremely well put and timely. Again, the non-response speaks for itself.
- Did the answer to the question about the iPhone make any sense to you at all? I couldn't find any useful information in that response at all - the closest he seemed to come was "stay tuned".
- Unless I completely missed something, your question about presence problems and delayed messages was totaly ignored.
The major points that I got out of the interview were:
- Skype is not interested in providing support for non-paying customers. The attitude is clear; try it, if it works for you then you can come back and thank us and kiss our feet; if it doesn't work for you, well, too bad, don't bother use because we don't want to hear it and we don't want to support you.
- Skype's long term-goal is not to provide decent customer support, even to their paying customers, but rather that customer support "should not be necessary". That is at the very least a ridiculously naive comment; in fact, in my opinion, it is actually a poor way to hide from support issues, by saying "we're working hard, not to support you, but to make support unnecessary", meanwhile all of you who currently need support please just shut up and get out of sight.
- Skype wants to be everywhere, on everything, but isn't willing to commit to anything, doesn't want to talk about the iPhone, Mac, Linux, or whatever else. They're going to be on "lots of devices, real soon now". Lots. Real Soon Now. But don't ask how we are going to support all those people on all those devices.
I don't know how you felt after conducting that interview, but after just watching it, I felt rather soiled....
In any event, my sincere thanks and appreciation on a job well done in very difficult circumstances.
jw 6/10/2008
Believe it or not, we’re not trying to reduce the need for customer support because we secretly want to make life miserable for our customers :)
As Scott suggests, we’re aiming to make our users happier by doing two things – improving the customer support system itself, partly by dramatically increasing staffing. At the same time, we’re working to remove the root causes of the most common problems our users face. It’d be naïve of us to ignore one or the other of these, to be honest.
Of course, we could spend all our time ‘hiding’ as you put it, and ignore those who need help now. However, at the other extreme, to invest solely in support infrastructure at the expense of eliminating the causes of the problems themselves would be very a very short term approach. That’s why we’re tackling both.
It is not a secret that you "want to make life miserable for our customers", all you have to do is read your own User Forums (Skype Community), and the secret is out. Either that, or you are trying to entertain them by sending absolute nonsense in reply to support requests.
Simply saying that you are going to "improve" support, and "remove the root causes" doesn't accomplish anything at all, especially when your credibility on such issues is substantially less than zero. When Skype "support" starts actually solving problems, and sending rational assistance to users, then at least some people will start to believe that it might be getting better. When Skype stops blocking user accounts without notifying them - leaving them to discover it, to their dismay, the next time they try to use it - and then taking anywhere from four days to four months to even explain why, then some people might start to believe.
Removing root causes to reduce the need for support? How about the "root cause" of the video freezing, disappearing, being solid black, or green, or with green stripes? You've had two years to get to those "root causes", but it doesn't look as if you have made a lot of progress. Likewise for audio distortion and dropout, conflict with Logitech software over audio settings, and system crashes because of conflicts with audio drivers. What about the "root causes" of presence reporting unreliability? It has been reported for more than a year, the result of it is that contact requests and chat messages can be delayed for hours, days, weeks, months... or it is impossible to call someone who you KNOW is online... how are you doing on the "root causes" of that one?
I have no idea whether you are actually making any real attempt to improve your customer support. But over the past two years I have become absolutely convinced that whether you try or not, it will not improve, it will remain exactly the same abysmal disgrace that it has always been.
jw 7/10/2008