If you’re still following this thread, I’d like to ask if the deck from your presentation will be made public. I’d love to get a copy.

Thanks.

people asked me this during last week: Ami C of Deloitte, Jim S of Shared Insights and Elizabeth C of Yahoo. “Are you going to blog about this?” Now, normally I dont think much about it, but it really got …

Obviously, this response is completely from my perspective:

(1) I think there was probably one more thing Belicove could have done to get his point across without looking like it’s an attack, and that would be simply to talk to Diane personally first. However, on the same note, depending on the response he got from that and from the escalation of the issues, I wouldn’t fault him for bringing this problem to light, even inside the conference session. It’s a valid concern from a valid customer and if it hasn’t been fixed, then he has full rights to say so in a semi-public forum. In fact, to that point, WebEx should be happy he didn’t start a site and garner support from the haters out there (every company has them). My point is he could have done far more detrimental things than he did.

(2) Diane, I don’t believe there is a threshold to cross before you can start a “community initiative”. However, I think it’s kind of jumping the gun to start something with any other motivation other than working towards fixing customer service problems at this point. It’s obviously a pretty contentious and big concern with current customers (even those other than Belicove who I talked with at the conference). My main problem is with the comment that customer service and community are different. I don’t believe they are (at least not at this point for WebEx). Now, if the motivation is to better customer service, then by all means, please do that!

(3) I appreciate, Diane, that you are concerned enough to even post a comment here to respond. That does help, and I (and I think WebEx customers) do appreciate the conversation you’re jumping into. Now, conversation and communication, however difficult, is intended to lead to results. I would be very happy to report in the future that customer service has been improved. My community-focused heart would do a little dance if/when that occurs.

The other thing that comes to mind here is that communication is a difficult process. Since I did talk with lots people throughout the day, they were either lying to me about their perceptions, or there was more than one way to interpret the incident. After all, isn’t that life? We all listen and observe with our biases and beliefs. So my commitment to Mr. Belicove is to try to get some additional response, even fully recognizing that the response may not be satisfactory. My other observation is that this very human F2F conversation was difficult but real. As I said in another blog response, I better fasten my seatbelt.

Full discalaimer: I’m on the Shared Insights team and work directly with Diane and WebEx on their community initiatives. I’m going to try to lay my Shared Insights hat to the side and respond as an observer at the session.

My impression was that Belicove wasn’t really interested in finding a solution to his problem with his comments (attack?). When Davidson accepted his problem as a valid issue and agreed to personally help him to a solution, he continued to berate her. IMHO, this is just bad form. If Belicove chose this course in an established online forum, he’d be reprimanded by other members (again, imho). While some people may have been nodding their heads in agreement with Belicove, I’d like to think the majority in attendance were shocked with his overall approach.

Whether the presentation was salesy or passionate, I chose to interpret it as the latter, but understand how others saw it as salesy. In any event, we’re all free to tune in/tune out or stay/walk out. If Chris (and others) didn’t like what was hearing he could have simply left. In fact I’ve seen people doing just that throughout the event when they felt the return on their time just wasn’t there.

Finally, I wrote a blog post on the opportunity Davidson and WebEx were presented with when Belicove took control of the room this morning. I’m confident there interest in continuing the conversation with their customers is genuine. (ok… maybe I just put my hat back on for a second there.)

I look forward to your thoughts.

As we continue to say, there is no cure for marketing a bad product, but there is a cure for fixing bad systems that allow such products to continue to exist. Change the leadership, change the systems and listen to the customers.

Isaac, I definitely did make note of the fact that she was describing an initiative designed to create deeper relationships. The interesting thing, however, is her perception that there is a difference between customer service and community dialogue. I don’t necessarily find a big difference between the two. But, I guess it depends on what your motivation is by engaging the community.

I also agree that Diane’s offer to take the discussion offline was appropriate. But, that doesn’t negate Belicove’s appropriate timing and forum for bringing up the point. Not to mention, even, the point he was making was very pertinent to the presentation topic.

Again, I appreciate the counterpoint.