Congratulations to Technorati for turning 3 and changing the look and feel of its Web site, which you can read about here.….
Lots of Web sites make changes to improve the customer interface, but it’s service that is still at the heart and soul of customer experience. And in that regard, Technorati still has some growing up to do.
We recently moved this blog to a new url (to www.mpdailyfix.com, so as to not get it confused with our main www.marketingprofs.com site). And I have been surprised at receiving no support from Technorati when I tried to claim our new domain. The message instructed us to contact technical support. Which I did. Over 5 times. I started trying over a week ago, and have sent 5 different emails to follow up (just like they say), plus filled out another customer support request.
So far — no luck. It appears to be a service black hole.
This imight be a typical situation where a company grows very fast, but misses the mark of basic service. This is one of the reasons I really don’t like a single company starting to dominate any aspect of the internet (remember Microsoft?).
Maybe you have some more positive experiences that might help me out of this funk. I’m not really interested in celebrating Technorati’s achievements until, well, someone follows up to help us claim what is ours.
Lousy and even mediocre service is unacceptable. Unfortunately, less-than-good service seems to predominate the business world. As I have written and counseled over and over again, business is not about products and services, it is about experiences and solutions. Apparently, Technorati doesn’t get it. They aren’t alone, and along with all the others who fail the test of creating great customer experiences and providing customer-friendly solutions, their brand will suffer for it.
Hi – sorry to hear about your troubles. However, I would cut Technorati some slack – they run a free service!
Hi Peter,
I would cut them some slack, but MarketingProfs is basically a free service as well (except for our premium members), but we don’t make people send us 6 or 7 help messages and not respond. That, to me, is totally unacceptable.
Sadly, I have had less than pleasurable experiences with Technorati, and their customer service took almost 2 weeks to email me back, which in my mind is wholly unacceptable, even for a service that is supposedly free. Now having said that, my interaction with tech support was pleasant and actually very helpful, but the waiting is a pain and the more often than not inaccurate stats make Technorati a rather useless tool at times.
I do wish Technorati was easier to use. I also wish their watchlists could be emailed like Google’s news emails. I have had a hard time trying to figure them out. For my blog, the service always seems to be days behind in its crawling, despite the fact that I auto-ping them. Mike
I had similar experience when i changed my blog title.
but after time it fixed itself. by itself.
frustrating.
Thanks to all of your comments…just an update, it’s now been 2 weeks without a word. I’ll let you know if they ever respond.
Allen,
I’ve shared your Technorati experience and find it very ironic. If blogging is all about relationship-building, and dialog, how sad that one of the key tools to enable users to find the blog they want isn’t playing by the “rules.”
Best,
Nancy
PS Other free services–Feedburner, Branica–do a great job of customer service.
I was going to keep quiet about this because I’ve blogged about how awful technorati is so many times.
While they are currently the best blog tracking tool we have, they are generally DAYS behind on my blog links.
Either it’s a really hard job and that’s why they have no competition, or they have no credible competition because nobody else has understood that there is huge potential in tracking blogs accurately and providing good service to people who love to write about bad service.
at the moment, my stats haven’t been updated in over a week, despite the fact that i ping them whenever i update, which is several times a day.
sigh