David Berube’s OLD Blog

About a month ago I created a new support system for MoFuse. Before this new support system all support requests were handled via email. Now, with the new system, support requests are sent, received and replied to right from the user’s MoFuse dashboard.

I made the system for my own well being. Since I handle 98% of all support requests I wanted a system that didn’t let me lose things. If I let a support request email go two days without responding, it was lost in my email clutter, forgotten about and then there was an angry user. I didn’t want that anymore, so I spent a few days making MoFuse messaging.

When a user sent a support request in through the old system, I’d send a reply email with the answer and I usually never heard back from the user. Now with MoFuse messaging users are replying to my replies and I’m sort of developing this one-on-one relationships with some users. Almost every support request I reply to gets a reply back from the user, whereas before I only got a reply back if my answer wasn’t satisfactory enough for their needs.

So now I’ve had a chance to develop a somewhat personal relationship (as much as it can be through support requests) with a few hundred users, and they’re almost unanimously happy with the level of support they get which makes them happy, and me happy.

Little changes sometimes have a great affect. Building those relationships with people who had a problem with our service, and then getting into a conversation with them about their problem and how I’m able to help solve there problem goes a long way. Some of them write blogposts about it, others just give you a big ole’ thank you. Both of which make your day.

I want MoFuse customer support to be as good as Apple’s. They are a leader in making their customers happy and every company, small or large, should model themselves after them. After all, without customers or users, you have nothing.

Mowser is dead – so the mobile web must be dead to. If you’re a reader of Read Write Web, TechCrunch and the others you would be lead to believe this as true. It’s the furthest thing from the truth.

Russell Beattie, CEO and Founder of Mowser, is in a tough spot financially. It’s not easy being an entrepreneur. His financial situation seems to have placed him in a rough patch and that frustration has come out and it was inaccurately aimed at the mobile web. He’s in a bad spot right now and I understand his frustrations, but I disagree with the reasons he felt Mowser failed.

There are a variety of reasons Mowser seems to have failed that have nothing to do with the mobile web being dead, see Mike Rowehl’s (co-founder of Mowser) take on why it failed. Mike sums everything up pretty nicely.

The blogosphere, going on Russ’s post, was quick to claim the mobile web dead, and in place of it the full web will emerge. They are all flat wrong.

Those people who are quick to jump to the conclusion that the mobile web is dead and that the iPhone pulled the trigger are wrong. The iPhone planted the seed. Apple has spent millions of dollars marketing the web on your mobile phone, creating awareness that you can access the internet from the device in your pocket.

Detractors will say, why do you need a mobile web when these mobile browsers can browse the desktop web? They are right to an extent. The iPhone lets you to browse the desktop web, yes. And the radio lets you pick up a television signal. Following me?

What I’m trying to say is that, yes, you can view the desktop web on the iPhone and it’s the best mobile browser out there. But visiting an iPhone specific website is a much better experience than visiting that same site’s full-desktop-version.

Facebook is a great example of this. I much rather use Facebook’s iPhone version on my iPhone rather than trying to navigate their desktop version through the periscope that is the Safari mobile. Same goes for Digg, Bank of America, LinkedIn and Google.

Websites of the future will be designed for three screens. The larger smart phone screens(iPhone), smaller mobile phone screens(RAZR, etc) and the desktop screens. You fit the content to the media it’s designed for. You can’t take something designed for a 19” screen or larger and then simple zoom-it-out so that it fits on a tiny screen. Nobody wants to look at the web through a periscope and you wouldn’t put a YouTube video on a matchbook cover (thank you David Harper).

My final take, the mobile web isn’t dead, far from it. Ask the other founder of Mowser, ask the guys at AdMob, ask David Harper, ask myself. Here at MoFuse we’ve seen consistent mobile pageview growth of at least 40% month over month.

About 20 days ago I wrote a post about my shitty Polaroid television set that I purchased one year and six months ago, that post can be found here.

My opinion was quite clear, I bought a product that was cheaper and I paid the price for it, but I didn’t expect their customer service to abandon me for an issue that I did not cause.

Regardless, the search term polaroid televisions on Google now shows that post on the front page. Now anyone that is consciously about to make a decision about purchasing a Polaroid television will probably end up reading that post. When I say consciously I mean doing their research before making a purchase.

This next piece is not meant to be pretentious in anyway, but they will probably lose a customer or two because of that post and its top position on Google for the generic search term. Whereas if Polaroid sucked-up the $80 it cost to fix the television for a defective part, they would have gained a customer or two because that post would have been about how great their customer service was to me.

Don’t believe that I would have wrote a post commending their customer service? I’ve done it on more than once occasion in the past regarding Microsoft’s customer support of the XBox 360. To date I’ve sent my XBox back for repairs 4 times and I’ve been out of warranty for years. They’ve never charged me a dime, they always overnight it to me and the most recent time they even gave me a free wireless control.

That’s good customer service and they won’t lose any customers from that effort. Polaroid on the other hand will, and they probably deserve it.

Note: To be fair, the VP of Customer Relations did get in contact with me and offered to send me the replacement part, but it was a lengthy back and forth process of approvals that immediately made me say it’s not worth the $80 to go through it all.

In response to this post.

A Senior Vice President at the Polaroid company got my message and contacted me regarding my problem. They offered to not replace or repair my television but to send me the part that is defective free of charge.

I was hoping for a complete victory but I think this is a good move on their behalf and I’ll take it.
Atleast now I know that they don’t completely barricade themselves off from their customers and are willing to help in some sort of way with problems related to their products.

I’ve sinced sent my television to a local repair shop and we’ll see if I get the part in a timely fashion!

Things have been buzzing with MoFuse lately, bringing on a team, getting our first office and some even more exciting things that I haven’t talked about yet but will in the near future.

Here is what’s new and I can talk about:

• MoFuse is no longer a subsidiary of  Swift Blue, LLC, it has grown up and is now MoFuse Incorporated.
• I am no longer the CEO of MoFuse, Inc. — I willfully stepped aside and asked Annette Tonti to take the reigns!
• Moving into our first office in Providence, RI tomorrow — it’s small but will suffice for the short-term.

Other than that there is one other big development that I’ve been hush-hush on. We’ve got some great new features in the roadmap that our users are going to absolutely love and I can’t wait to get those rolled out.

Next few months are going to be exciting to say the least!