The first thing I thought when reading this article is that it's a shame the author chose this topic as his way of framing the post. If you remove the focus completely from the potentially flame-war issue this is based on there is some great advice in this article.
Specifically: "When I worked at Lulu, Bob Young used to say that whenever you screw up, it's actually a tremendous opportunity to win a customer's loyalty by making it right."
Pretend the topic is a bug found or any customer job delayed/flubbed. This is a great piece of advice. Generally engineering-types focus very much on explaining what happened and not enough time on hearing the customer, apologizing, and explaining that it won't happen again. It's our natural personality as problem solvers.
But I've seen how apologizing for even a major mistake can win loyalty, get help fixing the problem, and even make deals bigger/longer. "Wait, that problem happened because we are sending the data to you in that convoluted way? We should either fix that or work together on how to make it easier for you to support it." If done right, the relationship will become more collaborative (your ultimate goal) and the customer will appreciate you more.
I framed the post around Sqoot's apology because that was what gave me the idea. I didn't intend to slap them around any more than they have been. It's just an example of what I think was meant to be a genuine apology that fell totally flat.
But yes, my central point is that when someone (or the whole Internet) is pissed off at you, you have their attention and a chance to turn things around, if you have the right goals in mind. Nurturing your relationship with your customer(s) or audience is likely more important than saving face or winning an argument.
I wasn't knocking you at all- sorry if it seemed that way! I was merely saying it's unfortunate that the discussion is going to focus too much on what made you think of this post (this particularly hot-button issue around women in tech), instead of the post itself, in which you included some really useful and practical advice for everyone. Proper apologies to win customer loyalty is a huge and important idea.
That was my impression, too. You weren't grandstanding or sounding sanctimonious, but rather saw an opportunity to write an informative article using Sqoot at an example. It was well-written and entertaining. Thanks for writing it!
Specifically: "When I worked at Lulu, Bob Young used to say that whenever you screw up, it's actually a tremendous opportunity to win a customer's loyalty by making it right."
Pretend the topic is a bug found or any customer job delayed/flubbed. This is a great piece of advice. Generally engineering-types focus very much on explaining what happened and not enough time on hearing the customer, apologizing, and explaining that it won't happen again. It's our natural personality as problem solvers.
But I've seen how apologizing for even a major mistake can win loyalty, get help fixing the problem, and even make deals bigger/longer. "Wait, that problem happened because we are sending the data to you in that convoluted way? We should either fix that or work together on how to make it easier for you to support it." If done right, the relationship will become more collaborative (your ultimate goal) and the customer will appreciate you more.