Bored of eating your own dogfood? Try smelling your own farts

bryanrasmussen

currently on the front page the post directly beneath this one was 25 years of eggs https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47427224 a happy coincidence.

mpalmer

Dogfooding was a virtuous cycle for user and service provider alike, because incentives were aligned. Then growth - excuse me, metastasis - came along. Thanks to metastasis - excuse me, enshittification - we've outgrown dogfooding. We'd used it as a kind of UX gyroscope, something that works to keep us balanced without too much institutional thought or effort. It made us more efficient at competing. Now that the biggest firms are the least threatened by competition, why would they subject themselves to the indignities of the User?

chromacity

I agree with the broader point, but I'm perplexed that the author is talking about dogfooding as a "sacred practice in the tech industry" in the context of customer support. Among big tech companies, customer support usually isn't seen a part of the product. If you work at Facebook, Google, or Microsoft, you don't try to go through the non-existent consumer support channels to resolve issues with your account.

cainxinth

I’m the kind of person that just assumes customer service is going to be bad. I gird myself whenever I have to call a company and just deal with their gauntlet with patience, knowing the trick is to outlast them. It costs them money every time you call. I’ll often tell them I know that and assure them I will continue calling until the matter is resolved. It’s not fun, it’s just the way things sadly are. My old man, however, still feels some kind of righteous indignation when he spends his hard earned money and doesn’t feel he’s getting what he paid for. He loves to give a piece of his mind to the companies that mistreat him, and he always says “And I hope my comments are being recorded for quality assurance!”

emerongi

My farts always smell good to me.

bix6

Yeah well economies of scale matters more than your sanity

mrweasel

Two stupid calls I've had: 1) I call to cancel an insurance policy on a car I sold. I'm greeted by the IVR, press three to cancel a policy, we're off to a good start. Next follows a long speech about how I need to call a special number if I stuck in the middle east and need to get back home, general precautions I need to take and my rules and rights. All great information, except I've already indicated that I call to cancel a policy. The chance that I'm sitting in an airport in Bahrain, desperately trying to get home, yet I decide that now is a good time to go through and cancel unneeded insurance policies is absolutely zero. You already know why I'm calling, tailor the message to that. 2) Internet is out, for the second week. Customer service dude is typing in stuff, looking stuff up, trying to figure out why the case has been closed. "While we wait let me talk to you about our streaming bundles"... Dude, I know the boss is making you do this, but don't try to upsell a streaming bundle to a customer you can't even get online. The doctors office is the worst though. Their entire system for guiding you through when to call and where to call take minutes for them to explain. The call it routed to the same people regardless. There are so many confusing and irrelevant messages from the system and in the end you are still routed to the same set of people. Most of my calls to customer services is because selfservice online absolutely suck and can't do simple things. Every industry could save a fortune in callcenter costs if their websites was ever so slightly better. Often it's not even about being able to selfservice, it can just be providing the tiniest bit of actual information. Your call volume is larger than normal for the past five years, because your stupid website is getting worse every year.

treetalker

Case in point, may every book the author picks up be designed like his website.

afarah1

Ah, so the minutes long wait hearing answering machine bs is a universal experience. I thought it was a local thing and limited to ISPs, utilities, and financials... When I can choose between competing companies, having a direct line to a human for customer support is at the top of my list. I'm happy with either chat or phone, I just don't want to go through a bot first.

MitchSaid

Some years back I was introduced to UK service consultancy Vanguard (and their "Vanguard Method"), essentially a systems thinking approach to improving service (not to be confused with the enormous US investment management company). In their world, "smelling your own farts" (ie. listening to and, more importantly, understanding what matters to your customers using normative learning methods) isn't primarily about empathy, it's about getting knowledge so you can understand how to intervene in your company as a system. Put that way, it's not a waste for decision-makers to listen to customer phonecalls, it's in fact the only way for them to gain the knowledge they need to understand what to do to improve their service (assuming that's their goal).

Aurornis

> There's an oft told story about Jeff Bezos pausing a meeting to call his own customer service number - and waiting over 10 minutes for an answer. One of my jobs was at a company that had developed at unhealthy amount of bureaucracy and politics. The product barely mattered to some because they were playing internal games of grandstanding, taking credit, and building their empires. In meetings where were supposed to be talking about product direction and priorities I would some times pull out my phone and open the app to try to demonstrate some real problem with the service. The tone of the meeting would change to panic as certain product leads would try to do anything to stop me from showing what the real product did instead of their neatly prepared slide decks that showed a much nice story for the executives. I became the enemy for showing the actual product instead of their alternate world of KPIs and charts.

ChrisMarshallNY

There was a famous Brown and Williamson phone message, from late last century: https://nypost.com/1999/09/23/smoke-gets-in-your-eyes-when-y... I actually have a recording of it (scratchy), but won't link it, because it's probably not worth it. It was a riot.

GuestFAUniverse

It's the same horse manure, when architectonauts and developers aren't responsible for the operation of their Goldberg-inventions. Another phrase that comes to mind is: no skin in the game. To me "unaccountability" -- or whatever naming fits better -- needs its own circle of hell.

LocalH

But my own farts smell good

blfr

With a mass product we're all at the mercy of the bottom quantile or even vigintile. These are the people who need to hear about checking website, collecting basic information, etc. Everyone who works with regular consumers, from doctors to shop assistants, knows this. And everyone who manages these first lines knows how much it costs. Hence the queue, the reminders, the redirection to self-service. Also, this is how you can instantly establish your own competence and be treated seriously. Just go into the basic context and what you need straight from the hello, have documents at hand, even just loaded on your phone, etc. There's usually also a second queue. Various "premium" offers (like higher inflows bank account) or just having someone's direct phone number.

chanux

Whenever I have to call an IVR system for support it puts me in a blood rage 98 out of 100 times. This space is the ultimate dark pattern mine field. My common interactions were with banks and telco companies. Absolute trash. I'm pretty sure some systems allowed remembering the DTMF menu and press it while the voice recording played. But the recent systems I called did not allow this. It was like they intentionally made people wait to suffer the torture. People call these systems as a last resort (At least I do). It should be illegal to make them so bad. Also, I used to work with Telco side guys of these systems and they were very proud of these "capabilities". Sorry for the rant. I had to vent it out.

joemazerino

The age old problem. Customer service isn't supposed to be mind numbingly unfathomable, and responding to customers should be easy. Unfortunately, unless higher management engages (is that Bezos or Gates? I've heard both) things will get lost in the mix.

skeeter2020

In my last role (engineering side) the VP of Product objected to me using the phrase "eating your own dogfood" because it was "gross" and she always interjected and replaced it with "drink your own champagne". I countered (privately) that was a feature; it's supposed to be a little unappetizing because you're early, building empathy and getting a different perspective (to a dog, dog food is delicious!). I think the difference in perspective succinctly illustrates the schism between trying to understand the customer experience asap, and the data-driven, kpi crowd where - conveniently - you can't discover these issues until it's too late.

shevy-java

Customer service has different meanings. Personally I prefer good, simple and effective documentation. I hate having to use a phone to explain problems. It's ok to do it in person, but not my preferred way. > It's all very well to experience your own product when it is working, but when was the last time anyone in the above organisation went through a "difficult" customer journey. I kind of prefer companies that build products that never ever need anything. Not even warranty calls, because the thing just keeps on working. What I noticed in the last few years was that we are too dependent on google search. Now that it sucks, finding high quality information has become harder - and AI trend is further ruining this, as everyone just has the AI summarize stuff now, which does not always work either.

daneel_w

To me, "dogfooding" isn't using your own product out of loyalty or some nondescript principle, as the author suggests. It's specifically about using your own product during its development as a means of testing while it's in its worst phase - literally eating dog food for a while.