Today marks two weeks since my personal boycott of Facebook. What could make me do this? Well, two weeks ago they notified me that they had changed my password…without my permission. The only explanation was “for security reasons.” I was upset, but I quickly emailed them to reset my password to the old password. I only got an automatic email response saying “The Facebook Team” will look at my request. I emailed two other times after that with the same results. For almost two weeks that was all. Monday I actually got a response from a real person who said that my password was reset. Great!
No. Not great. My password was reset to another random one, not my original which I requested. My request was either ignored or not even read!
Contrast this very poor customer service with Goodreads. I like Goodreads for somethings, but I love Listal because you can make lists private. Goodreads does not currently allow you to specify if one of your shelves is private, semi-private or public. I emailed them and suggested that capability. Within a day or two I got a response saying that there are no plans to do this but that it will be considered. Of course I was disappointed, but Goodreads still showed me, a user, that they care about requests and comments.
Is our library listening to what our users are asking? When the answer to their inquiry is ‘no,’ are we understanding or uncaring?
If Facebook would just say, “Look, we recognize you don’t want to change you password but we can’t control this. We wish we could. Sorry” I would be happy and I would suck it up and change my password *sigh*. This is essentially what Goodreads told me which is why I am still using them happily.
The message: Show me you listen! Show me some empathy!
Goodreads 1, FB 0
Shaping Libraries 