|
|
Recent Articles |
Using EDM To Win With Operational Automation
Charlie Bess over on the EDS Next Big Thing Blog had a great post on Operational Automation will Always Win Out in the End in which he argues that a focus on low cost locations is never going to work better than...
Picking An Enterprise Decision Management Pilot
When I was reading Scott Ambler's book, The Enterprise Unified Process, he had some great tips for picking a pilot project that I thought I would shamelessly steal and adapt for a discussion of pilot projects for enterprise...
Yahoo Senior Marketer Says To Use EDM (Kinda)
I was reading this interesting McKinsey report - Confronting proliferation ... in online media: An interview with Yahoo!'s senior marketer. In this report Cammie Dunaway, CMO for Yahoo, talks about how Yahoo...
Big Companies Change a Lot
After speaking in Chicago on Friday, I spent a delightful couple of hours waiting out flight delays. (Yeah, I don't think I've written that sentence before, either.) I was hanging out with fellow speaker Chris Silver...
Google Enterprise & Ingram Micro Sign International...
Ingram Micro, the world's largest distributor of technology products, has signed an international distribution deal with Google Enterprise to distribute to Google Mini and the Google search appliance to small...
Google Names Microsoft In Antitrust Matter
Google filed an antitrust complaint against Microsoft, in secret, several months ago; the complaint suggested that Vista’s desktop search function is too hard to turn off. Now, as you might have noticed, the complaint...
|
|
|
08.20.07
EBay Drops Ball With Skype Crisis Communication
 By
Andy Beal
Om Malik rightly asks where was eBay's management during the recent Skype outage?
For a company that supposedly understands the value of web communities, it failed to ease the concerns of Skype users who went 30+ hours without service.
Ebay CEO Meg Whitman, Skype co-founder Niklas Zennstrom, and other Skype management made no statement, gave no assurances to their community, leaving their PR agency and the blog to keep people informed. Of course, this led to even more speculation, rumors and innuendoes.
Sure their words wouldn?t have brought the service online faster, but it would have made it clear to Skypers that eBay's management cared. Skype President Henry Gomez has background in corporate communications, so he should know a thing or two about crisis management communications.
I'm a heavy Skype user and was appalled that I didn't get a single update from Skype. In fact, if it weren't for the blogstorm, I wouldn't have had a clue as to what was going on. It's only today that we learn the outage was due to an update and resulting re-boot by Windows users.
So, should we expect more from Skype? Most people get Skype for free, so are we asking for too much? That's the question Mark Evans asks...
If, for example, you?ve never paid a penny to use Skype can you really complain too much when it goes down for awhile? Sure you?ve become dependent on it as an everyday communications tool but what do you expect for nothing?
Well, I happen to use Skype for my main business number and I pay them for a SkypeIn number and SkypeOut credits. So, yes, I expect the service to work. At the very least, I expect to be notified of why I'm losing $XXXX an hour due to clients not being able to reach me.
So, what could have Skype done differently?
• Email all users - at least those that have spent money with them - and let them know what is going on.
• Public apologies and updates from someone senior at eBay/Skype, not just vague blog updates.
• How about some token of apology? Maybe some free credits? I ended up having to take client calls via my cell phone - any idea how expensive that is?
• What exactly has been fixed, how can I be sure this won't happen again, and why shouldn't I switch to a competing service?
What do you thing? Do you think Skype handled this well?
Comments
About the Author:
Andy Beal is an internet marketing consultant and considered one of the world's most respected and interactive search engine marketing experts. Andy has worked with many Fortune 1000 companies such as Motorola, CitiFinancial, Lowes, Alaska Air, DeWALT, NBC and Experian.
You can read his internet marketing blog at Marketing Pilgrim and reach him at andy.beal@gmail.com.
|
