How to respond to people who complain about your company

And what the CEO's racist friend taught him about compassion. And racism.

Hello Gobbledeers,

How’s it going? We’ve got a lot today, let’s jump in:

Today…

• Just show your competitors’ bad reviews.

• “My friend was in the KKK” is not a great way for a CEO to kick off a meeting.

• Mac, cheese, lack thereof, and raisins.

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The Wall of Hate + The Matzah of Love

I pretty much talk constantly here about how negative reviews of your product can be turned into positives - if someone complains that your wine is too sweet, there is probably a market out there for people who like sweet wine, as we discussed in our column about Manischewitz*.

(*A quick diversion, even though we’re only 1 sentence into today’s column. If I had an editor she definitely would’ve suggested I wait until later to have a quick diversion, but that is - very specifically - why I don’t have an editor. Also, the cost. So, the diversion:

kvellercom

A post shared by @kvellercom

…My favorite part is that he has to explain that his nickname is the BYJew because he’s Jewish and plays for BYU: “My nickname is the BYJew, obviously a play on words from my faith.” Well, yes. Obviously. That’s why they call Hassan Al-Youri, Yeshiva University’s Muslim center for their basketball team, the Yeshivuslim.)

(I made that up.)

So, unexpectedly religioned football players aside, one of the ways to sell your product is to call out its own shortcomings and talk about why - in the case of your product - they’re a positive.

But that’s not the only way to use negative reviews.

Let’s say you work in an industry where people hate the existing big players.

Maybe, perhaps, cable companies. Or cell phone service providers. But maybe not that they hate the industry so much such that if someone were to, for example, commit a violent crime against the CEO of one of the companies in that industry in broad daylight, that the majority of people on the internet would be rooting for the murderer. In that case, maybe you wouldn’t use this strategy.

But if you are an upstart in an industry where people hate the incumbents, why not just create a page that has example after example after example of social posts where people are showering hate on the competition.

Behold, Feta, a startup that has created a product to help engineering teams run meetings and that competes with Zoom, Teams and Google Meet.

They’ve created what they call a Wall of Hate on their website that does just what we discussed above:

(My favorite is “Has anyone left Zoom because of their ridiculous terms of service and because the commies listen in?” Uh, no?)

To Feta’s credit, they do a really good job of positioning here. It’s as if they hired me. Which they did not. But it’s so good it’s LIKE they hired me - just to be clear. They’re comparing themselves to “all incumbent conferencing products” and just lumping them together as a bunch of garbage that everyone hates.

While on their homepage they’re specific about who they’re for and what the benefit is for those people: “Feta helps product and engineering teams run efficient meetings, document discussions for actionable insights.” (Although it seems like they’re missing the word “and” before “document discussions.” Oops!)

But super clear positioning - bravo!

However, why is this on the top of their brilliant Wall of Hate page:

A case for why today's teams need a better meeting tool —something that's more than a cluttered UI with subpar AI integrations, but more importantly, one that breaks the context silos!

BREAKS THE CONTEXT SILOS????

Yeah, I don’t know either.

Grade: A-

(Thanks to Gobbledy reader Julie M. for that great example.)

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Special K (Times 3)

I think we can all admit that being the CEO of a tech company is a difficult job. I’m not saying it’s the MOST difficult job - I mean, I don’t have any programming skills whatsoever, so being an engineer seems like it would be the MOST difficult job at a tech company for me. To wit, I don’t know what this means:

So if I can’t read that, it’s hard to imagine I could succeed as an engineer.

I think everyone believes they can be the CEO, but that’s definitely not true. The tech CEO’s purview is wide - they’re dealing with investors, and employees, and clients, and the product, and where the office should be, and whether the office should have snacks, and whether employees should even go to the office. Whew, that’s a lot of things.

And sometimes the CEO has to deal with crazy in the office. I’m aware of a company that, prior to Covid, provided, among other things, avocados for their employees to enjoy as snacks. Or to turn into other foods, like guacamole. I don’t know what they did with the avocados. That’s not the point. Then we had a pandemic that was either going to kill everyone - or not anyone, depending on which cable news network you watched. Regardless of the cable network you watched, employees didn’t go to the office. And then shortly after the global pandemic-slash-non-event happened, this company had a (virtual) all-hands meeting during which an employee asked the CEO if they could expense avocados they ate at home.

Answering that question is also part of a CEO’s job.

That’s because when an office dust-up occurs, people want direction and guidance from the CEO. So when previously free avocados are now unavailable, it’s up to the CEO to determine how to handle that situation.

Or, for another example, you’re the CEO of publicly traded cloud infrastructure something something called Digital Ocean. And you’ve recently acquired another company that happens to be based overseas. And one of the employees of that organization has posted to LinkedIn their displeasure with Digital Ocean’s support of gay rights. How do you address this?

From a great article about this situation:

[The employee posted] #SayNoToLGBT #ProudToBeMuslim" on LinkedIn, and crossed out a version of the Digital Ocean logo that had been turned rainbow for Pride Month. In the comments of that post, the employee wrote "LGBT is a disease not a human being thing according to science."

Hard to argue with science, y’know?

Anyway, now the CEO has to deal with the blowback from this event. So he has a Zoom meeting (video clip here) where he gets the company together and tells a story from his past about how he was able to overcome some ideological differences with a fellow employee and still have a great career at the company: (my apologies for the length of the quote but it was too awesome to cut down)…

"I got off to a rough start with [someone] who had been at the company for 40 years in North Carolina. And our manager saw this and talked to him and he actually turned a corner and became a mentor of mine…I had a great relationship with him. He never invited me to lunch, never invited me to have a drink, never invited me to play golf. We both loved golf. I came to find out this person was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, and it was a very powerful message in learning for me that we sign up for values [of a company] because we believe in the opportunity. We love the company. We can bend as long as we don’t break our personal beliefs, it can work incredibly well. And I want us all to think about this because we all bring different belief systems to this place. And it can still work, it will work, as long as we understand that we’re not asking people to compromise their beliefs to the point that they break. We are asking you to compromise to the point where you accept our values."

Because I know my readers just skim stuff and, God forbid, read an entire quote (I know you skipped that!), he said that one of his former co-workers was in the KKK but they worked great together (he became a mentor!) because they believed in the values of the chemical company they worked for (and they didn’t have to compromise their beliefs! He believed in playing golf. And his mentor believed in playing golf.)

And just like he worked with the KKK guy, everyone here should be happy to work with the gay disease guy because, golf?

Also, he told this story because HE THOUGHT IT WOULD HELP!

Also also, it didn’t help. Employees freak out, etc etc etc. The CEO left a few months later after finding out that being this callous means you’ll never find a company that will hire you again.

[pause]

I’m just kidding! Private Equity firm Vista Equity partners hired him and now he probably makes a zillion dollars.

The moral of the story? If you work with someone in the KKK, you’ll end up wealthy beyond your wildest dreams.

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Kraft Macaroni & Jeez I Can’t Believe We Have to Apologize

Hm, I feel like it’s been 5 minutes since I’ve shared a corporate apology with you gobbledeers. Are you up for another one? No? Oops.

Did you have a rough week at work? Maybe it wasn’t tell-the-kids-they-have-to-buy-their-own-avocados rough, but still rough. Even still, I’m guessing your week wasn’t as bad as Larry’s.

Oh, sorry, who’s Larry? I should back up.

In list form, here’s who Larry is:

1. Someone (“a TikToker”) buys some gluten-free Kraft Mac and Cheese.

2. Said gluten-free Kraft Mac and Cheese contains “Mac” and no cheese.

3. TikToker makes video discussing how her emails to Kraft mentioning the cheeselessness went unanswered, even though “she was diagnosed with Celiac disease five years ago and that mac and cheese is her comfort food.”

4. Here is the saddest sentence I’ve ever read: her video “has 2 million views and over 8,000 comments.”

5. Someone at Kraft replies to the video: “We’re not having any quality issues with our gluten-free Kraft Mac and Cheese.” No. You. Di’int.

6. TikTok loses their shit.

7. Brands jump into the fray. They jump into the fray by sending the TikToker stuff: “California Pizza Kitchen sent her several cauliflower crust gluten-free pizzas.” I assume CPK hates her and ground up some cauliflower and smushed it into a flat round disc and then dumped some tomato sauce and cheese on it. “Suck it, Kraft!”

8. AdAge reports that after the TikToker posted a video Kraft did reach out to her, and she spoke to “an executive named Larry.”

9. Poor, poor, sad, middle manager Larry. Larry “said that Kraft is conducting an internal investigation and that the food giant did not ask her to take down any videos.”

10. Imagine you’re Larry and have to “conduct an internal investigation.” Like picture that meeting. Who are you calling into that meeting? What’s the subject line of the meeting invite? “For fucks sake, just send the girl a coupon!”

11. Everyone who had to go to that meeting is now talking behind Larry’s back after the meeting.

12. Larry now has a choice - publicly throw his co-workers under the bus, or tell the comfort food TikToker that she should just enjoy that California Pizza Kitchen baked cauliflower concoction and see if that satisfies her need for comfort foods.

13. A Kraft spokesperson (not Larry, if you’re keeping track) responds, “Our Quality Assurance team is also diligently investigating the production issue to determine the root cause and to fix it.”

14. I feel like the word “diligently” is being used sarcastically in that sentence.

15. AdAge’s article continues: “The incident has given other mac and cheese brands a chance to challenge Kraft’s dominance in the mac and cheese category. Engel said that chickpea-pasta brand Banza and gluten-free mac and cheese maker Goodles have also reached out to her as of yesterday.”

16. If I’m reading this correctly, she wanted her gluten-free Kraft Macaroni & Cheese and brands responded with, “please eat our cauliflower pizza and chickpea pasta.”

17. If I ever post a video complaining that my box of peanut M&Ms did not contain any peanuts, and the sons of bitches at SunMaid send me a box of raisins to make me feel better, I will write Larry (who, in this scenario, now works at SunMaid) the nastiest, most curse-filled email he’s ever received, and he’ll wish he never left Kraft for SunMaid’s withered grape industrial complex (tm) in the first place.

    

    You make me sick.

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As always, thanks for reading to the end! Maybe you’re wondering how we can work together? Maybe? If so, here’s how:

1. Just schedule a 30 minute chat. I love speaking with readers about what they’re working on. And sometimes what I tell you is helpful. Sometimes. Here’s my Calendly link.

2. I conduct 2-day messaging workshops with software companies. At the end, you’ll have new messaging and your prospects will understand what your company does. Amazing!

3. Companies that have hired me to speak at their events tell me at the end that their audiences really enjoyed it. I assume that’s not what they say to everyone (tho maybe they do…except in this case I don’t think they’re lying). I’m at jared@sagelett.com if you’d like to discuss…