The business side of SL: What should people should espect from LL

[Roche Runo]

I got of topic in another thread and opened  my yap about how certain people should not treat the staff of linden labs as nasty as there are.

Another member questioned why I wanted to silence these disenters.

I pointed out that I didn't want to silence them on that the method is which they make their complaint known was derogatory to the staff and the company that makes the game possible.

The other member felt people that invest and support linden labs by paying real life money should be allowed to complain in any manner they see fit.

I respond by saying the money you are paying is moot.  You pay for special privileged not given to the free members  not for a perfect game.   I then stated that big companies would love to give customers but they will do according to there business practices and not on the demands of the customer.    And while they want to please you  if they can't you are free to take you money else well as they have more customers join.

This is what happened in nut shell.  

To continue:

Regarding the purchase of Sims:  You are paying an access fee to the virtual area  you didn't buy it.   This give you access to have more control over your playing experience.  To have lots of prims so you can be creative.  So you can set up your own little kingdom and make rules and if people don't like it  for what ever the reason they can go elsewhere Again it does give you the right to a bug free game.

Business in not in the customer pleasing game.  Its about making money.  And many people think a business makes money by making a customer they want.    Not so,  they make money by providing  a product or service a large amount of people want.   Business would rather lose the money from one customer than to have to put with a customer who always complains or is rude to their staff.   This is what I mean by what you give linden labs is a moot point.  

And the reason it is moot is there is some one right behind paying the money in that you stopped giving

And ironically I used to be one of those who thought my business meant something to business that cares.   While working for a major retail chain, I finally work up to reality.  

Now I am not saying LL is a heart corporation.   But linden labs is a business.   And they have certain business practices that they are implemented for what they hope will continue to take SL into the future.

They know about all the bugs, but money may not have been a lot to fix these bugs until next quarter or the quarter have that.  And they don't tell you this because while that's their plan  that plan may have to change.   budgets have been allotted.   Your particular complaint may be farther down the list or it may be on the listfor the first quarter of next year.

Staff have already been allocated on their projects and there was not enough to cover your complaint.

I saw some where  member said they should fix what wrong and not introduce new content.    Simple in theory Not it in Business.   Why waste the man hours when future plans may make the complaint irrelevant.  Or your complaint may be deemed by the LL to be of such minor inconvenience that its in the "No assignments, pick something here to work on" pile

 But most of all New content is important to keep the interest alive in the program.   Or part of a strategy to bring in more people.   More people means more income.   More income can mean more staff to work on those bugs. 

But the whole gist of my conversation on the other thread  was not about the complaining  but how the complaining was done.   I was talking about the complaints where the staff were called names, and how LL and its employees don't care or listen.

 First time LL hear the complaint they mark it down. It will be eventually  schedule for a fix.   Any other complaint of the same nature would just be ignored.   They have it  They know about it. Not more to be said till a patch comes out.

Getting angry and threatening to go somewhere has no effect on a business.  

Most of the complaints is see are valid ones.   Ones that would improve the game if fixed.  But what many people don't seem realize that programmers can not just pick a bug out of millions of lines of code.   Before they can do that they have to replicate the bug.   What might get you a faster fix is send linden labs information on what was happening when bug occurred.   What your system specs are, what did you last do before the bug happened.  Helping them will get the bug fixed a lot faster than calling them names and ranting about how your are being disrespected.

And it may be a bug that just can't be fixed without screwing up something else.   So its decided to just leave it.   Most programs go through a ground up rebuild at one time or another and fixing it then might be more cost effective.

I will stop for now and let people respond.

But I want to say one last time  I would never take away someone's right to speak out, but I will support limitation on "How it is said"

I look forward to your opinions

.

 

 

 

 

 

[Darrius Gothly]

If you take a single "complaint" post out of context, yes the language seems overly harsh, the sentiment seems overly emotional .. and the feeling you get is one of mild to elevated disgust that someone could say such things "in public".

But when you spend days, weeks and months on these forums ... and when you read day after day the same problems, the same issues and the same complaints .. from the same people .. about REAL issues that get ignored, dismissed or worse .. the intensity and vitriol laced into those "complaint" posts makes sense.

People here are not being unreasonable on first blush .. they are people that have grown more and more frustrated and are reaching levels of anger that reflects itself in their words. Justified anger.

If a customer of ANY retail store or corporation walked into their location every day and cited the same complaints as people here have expressed .. after a month of getting no response they would be well within their rights to begin bringing hammers, big mean friends and picketing on the front walk. If anything, the restraint shown by many with valid, costly and at times "fatal" (in the SL sense) issues is admirable.

IMO.

[Dresden Ceriano]

 

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Darrius Gothly wrote:

If you take a single "complaint" post out of context, yes the language seems overly harsh, the sentiment seems overly emotional .. and the feeling you get is one of mild to elevated disgust that someone could say such things "in public".

But when you spend days, weeks and months on these forums ... and when you read day after day the same problems, the same issues and the same complaints .. from the same people .. about REAL issues that get ignored, dismissed or worse .. the intensity and vitriol laced into those "complaint" posts makes sense.

People here are not being unreasonable on first blush .. they are people that have grown more and more frustrated and are reaching levels of anger that reflects itself in their words. Justified anger.

If a customer of ANY retail store or corporation walked into their location every day and cited the same complaints as people here have expressed .. after a month of getting no response they would be well within their rights to begin bringing hammers, big mean friends and picketing on the front walk. If anything, the restraint shown by many with valid, costly and at times "fatal" (in the SL sense) issues is admirable.

IMO.

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...Dres

[Dresden Ceriano]

I have to assume, since you IMed me suggested we finish the conversation that was started elsewhere, here, in the off topic forum, that you have directing this post at me. If I'm wrong, sorry... if not then, okay... I'll take this point by point:

 

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Roche Runo wrote:

I got of topic in another thread and opened  my yap about how certain people should not treat the staff of linden labs as nasty as there are.

Another member questioned why I wanted to silence these disenters.

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I never thought of your post there as being off topic, but if you insist...

I never suggested you were trying to "silence" anyone.

 

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Roche Runo also wrote:

I pointed out that I didn't want to silence them on that the method is which they make their complaint known was derogatory to the staff and the company that makes the game possible.

The other member felt people that invest and support linden labs by paying real life money should be allowed to complain in any manner they see fit.

---

You made a vague reference to "some people" that I didn't understand. My main point, though I did make others, was about your conception that these forums are lenient in their moderation. I never ever said that people "paying real life money should be allowed to complain in any manner they see fit". That would be absurd. Of course, there are going to be b1tchy people no matter what; and the more you p1ss your customers off the b1tchier they will get (reference Darrius' post).

 

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Roche Runo also wrote:

I respond by saying the money you are paying is moot.  You pay for special privileged not given to the free members  not for a perfect game.   I then stated that big companies would love to give customers but they will do according to there business practices and not on the demands of the customer.    And while they want to please you  if they can't you are free to take you money else well as they have more customers join.

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How very dismissive of you. I know very well what I'm paying tier for and I know even more well the extent to which SL is not perfect. My stating that I pay for tier was really only to b1tch about my sim being messed up... I'm really p1ssed off about it. I do see how someone might take it as me playing the "I'm a paying member" card... that was never my intention. Everyone, whether they pay tier or buy stuff from other people that pay tier, are equal as far as I'm concerned. And each and every one has the right to express their opinion about the platform and the direction in which it is going... that was my point.

 

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Roche Runo also wrote:

To continue:

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No... I don't want to continue. Tbh, it was tl,dr.

...Dres

PS I wish I could have put it as succinctly as Darrius did.

[Suella Ember]

Ahhh - the eternal debate and one that, to be honest, I'm a little tired of getting heavily involved in so please forgive me if I keep it succinct.

For the record, I agree with a lot of what the OP has said and I agree with a lot of what the responses so far have said too. The short answer, for me, is that everyone has a right to complain if they feel the need, but they don't necessarily have the right to to do so abusively or agressively.

I do have to quickly pick up on a couple of comments from Darrius (let's face it Darrius, we've been agreeing just a little too much lately and that can't be right! :smileytongue:)

 

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Darrius Gothly wrote:

But when you spend days, weeks and months on these forums ... and when you read day after day the same problems, the same issues and the same complaints .. from the same people .. about REAL issues that get ignored, dismissed or worse .. the intensity and vitriol laced into those "complaint" posts makes sense.

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I understand what you are saying, but there is perhaps a little more to it than that. For a start it depends how we define "from the same people". If, for example, we are talking about 10 people with the same regular, angry complaints it doesn't mean that those 10 people are right. 100 people maybe means there is something in the complaints that LL need to take heed of, although even then it's only a small fraction of their user base. 1000 angry complainants and LL should probably definitely be taking a hard look at the particular complaint.

That's not to say the 10 angry complainants should be ignored. Just that they shouldn't necessarily expect their complaint to be the popular opinion and one that LL must immediately address. It always annoys me a little when I see complaints that include the phrase "Everyone knows that ...." or "Everyone agreees ...". It's like the "Everyone knows that viewer 2 sucks and LL should drop it" type comments I see. Such comments tend to immediately devalue the complaint, in my opinion, because they attempt to speak for other people who may disagree entirely with the complaint. 

Also (and I'm probably being a little bit semantic here) I can't really agree that vitriol ever makes sense. I mean, it might do it very extreme cases where life is threatened or something, but I don't think anything as insignificant as LL policy warrant vitriol (Relatively speaking of course. I'm not saying LL policy is in itself insignificant!) If i strongly disagree with something (which does sometimes happen! :smileyvery-happy:) I'll try to firmly and cleary express my disagreement, but I hope I'll never stoop to being viriolic. My dad always used to say "The moment you become angry is the moment you lose an argument". It's probably not quite as clear cut as that, but I do generally agree with the underlying sentiment.

 

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Darrius Gothly wrote:

If a customer of ANY retail store or corporation walked into their location every day and cited the same complaints as people here have expressed .. after a month of getting no response they would be well within their rights to begin bringing hammers, big mean friends and picketing on the front walk. If anything, the restraint shown by many with valid, costly and at times "fatal" (in the SL sense) issues is admirable.

IMO.

---

 

Again apologies for being a bit pedantic and picking up on semantics but 'bringing hammers' and 'big mean friends' sounds dangerous to me. Protest a serious complaint if you deem it that important by all means, but keep it peaceful. This weekend's massive protest in London against the Government cuts in public services springs to mind - it was a huge protest (believed to be anywhere in the region of up to 500,000 people) that sent a very clear message that is hard for the government to ignore. Sadly, a small splinter group of a couple of hundred people determined to resort to violence marred the whole thing, diluting the message sent to government and giving them an excuse to focus on the disgraceful actions of those few rather than the bigger and more important message that had mass support.

There are, of course, very extreme cases where more violent protest might have some value. Again, we are talking about extremes where things such as lives are threatened though (we could perhaps draw a parallel with some of the disorder in places like Libya, for example). Relatively speaking, the insignificance of SL issues would never warrant violent protest.

In short - everyone should have the right to complaint and comment on their concerns with SL issues, but those complaints start to lose value the moment they become overly aggressive, in my opinion. Numbers are important too. A few complainants shouldn't be ignored, but it also shouldn't be assumed that their opinion is necessarily the popular opinion either. 

Okay so .. ummm ... not quite as succinct as I originally intended! :smileysurprised:

 

[Phil Deakins]

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Roche Runo wrote:

I pointed out that I didn't want to silence them on that the method is which they make their complaint known was derogatory to the staff and the company that makes the game possible.

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It's not easy to be derogatory to Linden Lab because the company is like that. Calling someone who lies a liar isn't derogatory to the person, because the person does lie. Linden Lab deserves the comments that are made about the company and some of the staff there are the ones who make it so. Some of the staff there are very good and don't deserve the flack but the company as a whole does merit it.

Paying customers have every right to complain about the shoddy service they they receive from any company, and Linden Lab provides *very* shoddy service to their paying customers. I wouldn't agree with insulting specific members of staff in public unless they start the insults, but that's not because some of them don't deserve it. It's because I don't agree with resorting to insults unless the other person starts it.

[Dogboat Taurog]

if linden labs were a start up company they wouldn't last a year the way they are operating.

they only allow free membership because SL sucks.

[Roche Runo]

I have also watch the people complain about the same things for four years.

And you maybe be surprised that I agree with you.  If its frustrated you and its being been going on for years then of course the posts get hyper.   But what I am saying is people are get mad over something they have no say in.   And counter this is years of people having to listen to the same rants over and over.  They can offer a suggestion but thats it.  But most people feel the frustration  but most dont act upon it in agressive ways.  The only reason that has been happening is because lindens have allowed it to done on there forums. 

Its like a mosquite chipping away a boulder dam with its stabber (Can't remember what the dang thing is called)

So my question is why are people getting frustrated and mad over something you have no control over.   What is the point to it.   You aren going to change it  so live with it you can.  Enjoy the the good parts, curse the bad parts privately.   

I guess with new forum rules thats what going to happen in anyway.    right? 

I will admit that maybe i found SL so enjoyable that I found it easy to over look the the bad parts.

Glad your particpating in the conversation.

 

  

 

[Dogboat Taurog]

i had given up complaining but you asked...

v2 sucks.

meshes suck.

web on a prim sucks.

LL suck.

teens suck.

no gambling sucks.

SL never had these problems when i started.

 

[Roche Runo]

dres my conversation is in the general not specific    

I took your comment about "if I have a complaint I should be able to voice it"  as mean you though i meant your should be silenced

And you did say correct me if I am wrong  "I have invested lots in Second life, I support them"   I took that to mean you have spend a lot of money on using there program.

And while yes many people know what the money is for  they act like they are equal partners in the company.

But many people don't and they get the wrong idea from posters who treat the program as if is it theirs.

I know you were extremely agitated   which is why i didnt take offense to your comments about it being my job and if i didnt like it get another job  lol

I hope you understand now that it was not the complaining I was refering it was the way it was being done. 

 

 

 

[Roche Runo]

Pep Thank your for the complement.  I am honored you would think linden lab hired me to post support messages.   What nice thing to say.

 

[Roche Runo]

Regarding Shoddy Service:

Now this is just for conversation and is no way are reflection on the poster who commented about shoddy service.

You do realize your setting the expectation and expecting LL to meet your expectations of what is concider proper value for service rendered. 

And what you concider prover value may or not be the same as some one else.

And might I ask is there anywhere that linden agreed to provide you with your level of service in exchange for the money you gave them. 

Please don't get me wrong I am merely trying to point out how some time we set ourselves up.  This happens with all interactions.  We believe something is implied when in actually it is not be we think that is the proper way. 

I guess that why crashes on computers, glitches in games dont get me riled up.   I accept the programs as offered and hope that improvements are in the works.  

 

[Roche Runo]

Following that logic Online commuinties such a DDO and Lord of the Rings are suck?

Please give us more to your comment.  I dont quite correlate the two. 

[Roche Runo]

Nope and that because the real life govenrment hadnt got involved yet.  

 

[Roche Runo]

suella  you put it into better words than I did.  Hope pep give you his approval

Now I would love to hear what you have to say about customer expectation and companies requirements to provide customers/players etc

 

[Dogboat Taurog]

 

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Roche Runo wrote:

Following that logic Online commuinties such a DDO and Lord of the Rings are suck?

Please give us more to your comment.  I dont quite correlate the two. 

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i have no experience of "a DDO"  or Lord of the Rings, your logic is lost on me.

 

 

[Phil Deakins]

@Roche.

Shoddy customer service:-

When you pay LL monthly for some land and someone else uses part of the land in such a way that you can't prevent it (seriously overtanging prims, for instance), and LL doesn't lift a finger to deal with it regardless of how many ARs you put in, then LL is not providing that for which you are paying each month. That's shoddy customer service.

When LL tell their paying customers that's it's ok to use a certain type of land for certain things, even going so far as to say that that's what that type of land is for, so that people buy that type of land with real money, and then turn around and put the monthly price up because people have been using the land in the way they said was fine, but now they say it was never ok to use it that way, it's shoddy customer service.

When LL accept unfounded ARs as being the truth, and penalise their paying customers without doing anything at all to check on the truth, it's shoddy customer service.

When LL reduces the level of "customer support" for paying customers to be almost non-existant, it's shoddy customer service.

You want more?

 

[George Orellana]

@OP. Any business that behaves the way LL has been behaving lately doesn't stay in business too long. Any business that which engages in any form of commerce whether directly or indirectly is responsible for meeting customer satisfaction. You would not expect the same bahavior from your local bank would you? Or from your local grocery store even? I would bet that you certainly would not. If you go to a restaurant in RL and are disrespected by any staff, you would complain to the manager. The same goes for LL.

What the LL fangirls forget is that although SL is a game, LL is a real business and must act like one there is no excuse. The problem is that LL like most SL businesses treat their business as a game. Sometimes I wonder if anyone at LL ever took a course on business, at least Business 101.

[Ackley Bing]

 

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George Orellana wrote:

@OP. Any business that behaves the way LL has been behaving lately doesn't stay in business too long. 

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Just because you and a lot of other people say so, and teach so, and so on.... so it is true.  What a bunch of B$.  Look at Microsoft.  I'm sure we can come up with a whole list of "misbehaving" businesses who've been in business for a long time.

[George Orellana]

 

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Ackley Bing wrote:

 

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George Orellana wrote:

@OP. Any business that behaves the way LL has been behaving lately doesn't stay in business too long. 

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Just because you and a lot of other people say so, and teach so, and so on.... so it is true.  What a bunch of B$.  

Look at Microsoft.  I'm sure we can come up with a whole list of "misbehaving" businesses who've been in business for a long time.

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Microsoft delivers a product and supports their product (even if support is outsourced to India). Microsoft, even if they are slow and behind some technologies do develop their product and improve it. Microsoft does not outright ignore their customers, they listen and remedy as best as they can, even if it took several years to develop Windows 7 to remedy the problem that was Windows Vista. Microsft has highly effective people at the head of the company, and thus Microsoft is effective and successful. In fact LL could learn a lot from Microsft.

 

ETA: In all the years I have been using Microsoft products I have only needed to call support once, and that was for my Xbox when it got the ring of death. I was on the phone with support for less than 15 minutes and within a few days I received a prepaid pachage so I could ship my Xbox for repair and within a few weeks I had it back and working. Support tickets for SL are still taking months with no response.

EATA: Microsft has long term goals which they meet with cooperative efforsts from the bottom up. LL has only short term efforsts and nobody within LL cooperates with each other, most often one Linden will contradict another Linden. Most reacently was Oz Linden contradicting Soft Lindin during the whole RedZone debacle. Problem with LL is that the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing.

[Ackley Bing]

 

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George Orellana wrote:

 

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Ackley Bing wrote:

 

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George Orellana wrote:

@OP. Any business that behaves the way LL has been behaving lately doesn't stay in business too long. 

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Just because you and a lot of other people say so, and teach so, and so on.... so it is true.  What a bunch of B$.  

Look at Microsoft.  I'm sure we can come up with a whole list of "misbehaving" businesses who've been in business for a long time.

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Microsoft delivers a product and supports their product (even if support is outsourced to India). Microsoft, even if they are slow and behind some technologies do develop their product and improve it. Microsoft does not outright ignore their customers, they listen and remedy as best as they can, even if it took several years to develop Windows 7 to remedy the problem that was Windows Vista. Microsft has highly effective people at the head of the company, and thus Microsoft is effective and successful. In fact LL could learn a lot from Microsft.

 

ETA: In all the years I have been using Microsoft products I have only needed to call support once, and that was for my Xbox when it got the ring of death. I was on the phone with support for less than 15 minutes and within a few days I received a prepaid pachage so I could ship my Xbox for repair and within a few weeks I had it back and working. Support tickets for SL are still taking months with no response.

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Microsoft has ignored their customers for years about various exploits.  They say they fix them, but they're not fixed.  Basically they pretended to address their customer's concerns.  "Bad behavior".  Serious security issues.  Microsoft is still in business.

 

[Suella Ember]

 

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George Orellana wrote:

@OP. Any business that behaves the way LL has been behaving lately doesn't stay in business too long. Any business that which engages in any form of commerce whether directly or indirectly is responsible for meeting customer satisfaction. You would not expect the same bahavior from your local bank would you? Or from your local grocery store even? I would bet that you certainly would not. If you go to a restaurant in RL and are disrespected by any staff, you would complain to the manager. The same goes for LL.

What the LL fangirls forget is that although SL is a game, LL is a real business and must act like one there is no excuse. The problem is that LL like most SL businesses treat their business as a game. Sometimes I wonder if anyone at LL ever took a course on business, at least Business 101.

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To be honest, I'd almost argue the opposite. Contrary to popular belief, I'm not a 'fangirl' but I do like to think of myself as realistic and I'm forever trying to point out to people that LL is a RL business and that very fact has implications for what they do and how their policies are enacted. I think people sometimes forget that fact when they complain about certain LL policies etc.

So yes, I absolutely 100% agree that LL is a real business and must act like one. That's going to sometimes mean making decisions that people who just want to play a game with no restrictions don't like and get angry about.

As LL is a real business it does, of course, also mean that customer satisfaction is very important. They don't always get that right but it's also important to remember that managing customer expectations is important too. Customer satisfaction doesn't mean doing everything every customer wants to make them happy. If it did most companies would go bankrupt!

Just out of interest, what is your opinion of 'the way LL has been behaving lately'? I've seen people criticise the 'way LL has been behaving' for years and it's still in business. I'm not saying there aren't things they can't improve because there undoubtedly are. I'm not seeing any particular behaviour change lately that directly threatens their existence though (if anything I'm slowly but surely seeing the opposite - a shift in behaviour that might just solidify their existence for a number of more years at least).

As I say, I'm not sure exactly what the bahavoiural issue we are talking about is, but using your "You would not expect the same bahavior from your local bank would you?" example - What I can say is that there are a few things that customers get unhappy about from their bank. Certain charges for example (not to mention the fact that they are largely responsible for the current recession we are in - but that's a whole other complex debate!) However, all we can do is express those concerns to our bank as directly and factually as we can. As long as they are operating within the law though,  it's unlikely they are going to change their policies unless a large proportion of their customers leave them.

It's pretty much the same for LL - if a huge number of customers starting leaving they have to try and figure out why and make changes to bring them back quickly. It hasn't happened yet though and I don't think it will happen. Yeah, some people have left (and new people have arrived) but their isn't a massive groundswell of people leaving SL because there simply isn't cause for the masses to leave. There's cause for different people to have different concerns about aspects of SL, but there isn't cause for the majority to leave. If anything I'd say we get a whole lot more listening from LL than we do from our banks anyway. My bank certainly doesn't have a forum for it's customers, or periodic User Groups for customers to attend and give feedback. About the best I can do is pop into my local branch to say my piece to an employee (but not to anyone who can make high end decisions unless in extreme cases) or I can drop them an email or feedback form and hope someone responds as I want them to respond!

[George Orellana]

 

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Ackley Bing wrote:

 

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Microsoft has ignored their customers for years about various exploits.  They say they fix them, but they're not fixed.  Basically they pretended to address their customer's concerns.  "Bad behavior".  Serious security issues.  Microsoft is still in business.

 

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I don't know about you but everytime there is a new "exploit" discovered I get a windows update to remedy the problem. Maybe you need to look at your Windows preferences and make sure you are getting the updates.

 

[Ackley Bing]

 

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George Orellana wrote:

 

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Ackley Bing wrote:

 

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Microsoft has ignored their customers for years about various exploits.  They say they fix them, but they're not fixed.  Basically they pretended to address their customer's concerns.  "Bad behavior".  Serious security issues.  Microsoft is still in business.

 

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I don't know about you but everytime there is a new "exploit" discovered I get a windows update to remedy the problem. Maybe you need to look at your Windows preferences and make sure you are getting the updates.

 

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Last year I received hundreds of windows updates.  Many of them claimed to address a security exploit, which still exists.  Isn't this how LL "behaves" according to some of you?  Microsoft has been in business for years.

This past January, microsoft claimed to fix the big security exploit, then came out with another claim to fix that exploit again in February.  Now it is the end of March: I can still use the exploit to get into other people's computers and list the entire contents of their hard drives, download files, etc.  There is no way to block it unless you know how to edit your .hosts file.

Regardless of their "behavior", they are still in business and have been so for a very long time.  Want to talk about Monsanto?

 

[George Orellana]

 

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Suella Ember wrote:

 

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So yes, I absolutely 100% agree that LL is a real business and must act like one. That's going to sometimes mean making decisions that people who just want to play a game with no restrictions don't like and get angry about.

As LL is a real business it does, of course, also mean that customer satisfaction is very important. They don't always get that right but it's also important to remember that managing customer expectations is important too. Customer

satisfaction doesn't mean doing everything every customer wants to make them happy. If it did most companies would go bankrupt!

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You got that part right. I never said they have to do everything people want. SL is diverse and expectations are different in every part of the world. However it is very important to make the "right" decision. In business there are right desicions and wrong decisions. The right descions are those that carefully crafted, thought out and thourouhly researched to meet long term goals, LL does neither. LL makes decisions with little research or understanding of their own product. LL decisions are based on short term goals. It seems that in the short term LL only wants to increase user base, but in the long run do they really have a plan to retain the users? LL is simply counting on the addiction factor of SL.

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Suella Ember wrote:

 

Just out of interest, what is your opinion of 'the way LL has been behaving lately'? I've seen people criticise the 'way LL has been behaving' for years and it's still in business. I'm not saying there aren't things they can't improve because there undoubtedly are. I'm not seeing any particular behaviour change lately that directly threatens their existence though (if anything I'm slowly but surely seeing the opposite - a shift in behaviour that might just solidify their existence for a number of more years at least).

As I say, I'm not sure exactly what the bahavoiural issue we are talking about is, but using your "You would not expect the same bahavior from your local bank would you?" example - What I can say is that there are a few things that customers get unhappy about from their bank. Certain charges for example (not to mention the fact that they are largely responsible for the current recession we are in - but that's a whole other complex debate!) However, all we can do is express those concerns to our bank as directly and factually as we can. As long as they are operating within the law though,  it's unlikely they are going to change their policies unless a large proportion of their customers leave them.

It's pretty much the same for LL - if a huge number of customers starting leaving they have to try and figure out why and make changes to bring them back quickly. It hasn't happened yet though and I don't think it will happen. Yeah, some people have left (and new people have arrived) but their isn't a massive groundswell of people leaving SL because there simply isn't cause for the masses to leave. There's cause for different people to have different concerns about aspects of SL, but there isn't cause for the majority to leave. If anything I'd say we get a whole lot more listening from LL than we do from our banks anyway. My bank certainly doesn't have a forum for it's customers, or periodic User Groups for customers to attend and give feedback. About the best I can do is pop into my local branch to say my piece to an employee (but not to anyone who can make high end decisions unless in extreme cases) or I can drop them an email or feedback form and hope someone responds as I want them to respond!

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First let me say this. A bank has free accounts and paid accounts just like LL does. Nonetheless free accounts are never told they cannot have any support. Can you ever imagine a bank where you could not walk into the bank and see a teller face to face because you are a free account? That would never happen.

Let me make one thing clear, I am not against change that seems to be your only claim in every thread in defense of LL, that people are afraid of change. I love change, I embrace change if it is for the better. I am a V2 user (not the official LL though it is always unstable) and I cannot wait for the day LL blocks 1.24 viewers because they are only holding us back from getting new and better features like mesh. Change is always good if it enhances your product and enhances user experience. However change is not to be made with no understanding of your product and your customer's wants and needs.

Stephen Covey emphasised the importance of "first seeking to understand than to be understood". If LL were really listening and trying to understand their product and their customers, they never would have done things like the merging of the teen grid and the implementation of display names (why these two decisions were bad decisions is a topic for another thread). If LL really understood their product and their customers, there would not be month long wait times in support tickets. If LL really understood thier product and their customers V2 development would be at the level of some TPVs by now. LL does what they want to do and then just expect everyone to accept it just because it is what it is and "we say so". This is not typical business behavior at least not the behavior of the highly effective and successful ones. Another poster here tried to compare Microsoft, well Microsoft is one of those that LL should learn a lot from.

P.S. Excuse my bad spelling I am in a hurry atm and don't have the time to go through my spelling and grammar.