Responding to Polenth
I know at this point you won't listen to me, or anyone else, who says this method of dealing with customer complaints makes you look bad. It's been said before and ignored. Though I do have to appreciate the humour in responding this way after someone specifically mentions that you will respond this way. That is not how you prove someone wrong.
It doesn't matter that a single person doesn't do customer service anymore when all the staff are encouraged to behave the same way. It's been the same style throughout on the thread, so it's clearly company policy, not something that can be pinned on one person. When a company has a policy of the customer always being wrong, it's going to shine through. Deal with the core problem and you'll have something to say. Anything else is just reinforcing that nothing has changed.
Hi Polenth
thanks for the feedback
We actually have taken in feedback and made lots of improvements. These include
1) Availability of live chat since early 2017, so author clients can get instant responses. They just have to use the live chat at
www.booksbutterfly.com - it's at the bottom right of each page. The live chat text specifically asks to leave email address. So even in the rare case you don't find someone you can leave your contact email and the issue and we will fix it
2) Toll Free Number (1-844-We-Promote) starting 2017 and dedicated numbers for USA, Canada, and England. So they have someone to talk to
3) A new team to respond to emails that responds relatively faster (1 to 2 business days instead of the earlier team which would take 1 to 4 business days and also miss a few emails every week)
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In the past (before March 2017) - email response within 1 to 4 business days
Now - option of instant live chat, or phone support, or email response within 1 to 2 business days
We continue to take in feedback and improve
The improvements have dropped number of problems drastically and led to a great reduction in disputes and problems -
Screenshots showing our Low Dispute Rate in April to Dec 2017 (6 disputes from 3,182 promotion packages sold) -
https://www.booksbutterfly.com/images/LowDisputeRate_2017.png
Low Dispute Rate in Jan to June 2018 (5 disputes from 1,977 promotion packages sold) -
https://www.booksbutterfly.com/images/LowDisputeRate5.png
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Things are getting better for our author clients, and dispute rate has fallen a lot
Our attitude is not - Customer is Always Wrong
Neither is it - Customer is Always Right
It's - we are entrepreneurs providing a service to entrepreneurs and artists
For the 98% that are great customers and good customers and are OK with a win-win arrangement we will do our very best
For the 1% or 2% that want win for themselves and lose for us, we will resolve the issue to the extent that is reasonable. Then we will avoid working with them in the future
Any reasonable person would be happy with getting a free re-run after they forgot to discount their book and messed up their promotion spot. This author is leaving a comment one year later, and we totally understand why the author is upset and we apologize sincerely for the rudeness
We also, at the same time, believe 100% that it is the author's responsibility to discount the book, and the author should be happy that a re-run was offered.
We stand by our policy that we will offer a free re-run if an author messes up pricing, and that is more than reasonable. We hope that if there is a pricing issue by the store or if an author forgets to discount their book, then they will be happy with free re-run, which does cost us a slot (even though author does not have to pay again we lose that spot), and that they will be reasonable and patient
This particular case was exacerbated by author's email (I think it was a company server or aol) rejecting emails from both our outlook and gmail accounts (we email twice), so they did not get our emails informing them that book is not discounted and asking them to discount the book
When the author tries to assign responsibility to us for not discounting their book and for their email not working it is very tough to not be overwhelmed by the win-lose proposition they are offering us - yes, it is unacceptable to be rude and we apologize for that. It was a mistake to be human in that moment
At the same time, we reject the notion that it is our mistake if the author doesn't discount the book. Vast majority of authors who experience pricing mistakes by store or forget to discount their book are very happy to get a free re-run. In roughly 10 cases we've had authors who thought it was our mistake, and 3 of those have written things on the Internet. That is another point of feedback to us - to be more flexible/careful in such cases
So, Polenth, thank you very much. We identified this pattern thanks to you and now in this case we know to be super careful when an author starts thinking it's our responsibility if they forget to discount the book or if the ebook store messes up their promotion
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