[Robotech_Master]

Originally Posted by evilrooster

OK, look, I came in all wrong. I was anticipating being attacked (considering some of the posting history on this topic, I think that's a reasonable expectation, TBH). But I should have left some of the defensiveness between the keyboard and the chair, as they say.

Much like Luke Skywalker and that big creepy tree cave thingie, what you find in a forum is what you bring to it. Come in expecting to be attacked, and by golly people will be happy attack you.

I still think there is a clash of mental models going on here.

Fair enough.

Can anyone see how the tone and demeanor of the people who came to tor.com to complain was antithetical to that goal?

Sure, I can. But I can also understand the frustration, as I've felt that way myself. I can also understand the tendency to post angry rants before thinking about it. I'm pretty sure I've got Aspergers, and it wasn't so long ago that I would have lashed out in exactly that way. It has taken me years—long, hard, frustrating years—to develop the self-control not to, so when I see people acting like that, I largely feel sorry for them that they haven't developed that self-control yet. I feel like that, plus my customer service training (which really helped with that self-control—nothing helps you learn to put a lid on it like knowing you'll be fired if you don't!) give me the insight to know how they should be handled.

Anyway, Torie and pnh aren't just forum moderators, and the issue wasn't just a forum issue. If they were, that's fine. They could be perfectly free to be snippy, and we (in the all-inclusive we, not meaning me in particular) could be pissed off at them as moderators, and maybe at the forum as a whole, but it wouldn't go any farther than that.

Unfortunately, the issue was one of Tor-the-publishing-house, and pnh and Torie are VIPs at Tor-the-publishing-house—it says so right there in the "About Us" page. In that situation, they aren't just moderators for Tor.com, but People Who Speak For Tor-the-publishing-house, and their words will reflect on Tor-the-publishing-house as well as Tor.com.

Done right, customer service is a sort of mental judo. You take someone coming in on an angry vector and let his own energy twist him around until he leaves on a happier one. You do that with an apology. If you apologize to a blustering person, admit he has a right to be upset, and promise you're working on the problem, he'll feel validated and, if not entirely happy, at least satisfied to have gotten it off his chest and be heard. If instead you yell at him, he'll just yell back and nobody will be happy.

My perception of tor.com is that it is a long term project, years long, with an eye to associating the Tor brand with a lively, interesting and intelligent community in the science fiction world. That takes priority, I suspect, over the sales of a few eBooks at the start.

I don't know that it's possible to build a lively, interesting, and intelligent community by yelling back when people yell at you. And if Tor representatives come off as surly, it could affect more than just the sale of the e-books. (People won't remember the provocation. They'll just remember the unprofessionalism of the ones who were provoked.)