Check out Sarah’s talk at LessConf 2011! She talks about the difference between customer service and support.

So, how was your day? Calm? Peaceful? You’re probably not an invested Assistly customer, are you?

I’m a part of eight accounts myself, and two of those I’m in for 10+hours a day. I would say I’m an Assistly power user, routinely the person my customers turn to to get help and advice learning the product. I’d say they mostly come to me before going to the help section, but that’s probably because I wrote the Assistly help section.

CoSupport became an Assistly partner early last year and we were always happy as a team to advocate using it exclusively to our customers. It wasn’t because we had some money shuffling deal with them – we actually made zero money at all recommending our customers use the product. We truly, truly enjoyed using it and felt it was the best for small app teams to use for their online support. That opinion ended this week when overnight, without any warning, Assistly rebranded, redesigned and renamed themselves as Desk.com.

W.T.F.

This is some bad decision making, folks. This is probably as bad a decision as Netflix made, wanting to split their DVD and streaming services in two. Maybe you don’t see that right away, but the ramifications of this are going to tarnish Assistly/Desk.com’s reputation in the support tech industry in so many ways that could have been avoided. That’s what actually angers me about this situation: It all could have been handled so much, much better and all this frustration could have been avoided.

Here is a run down of shoulda/coulda ramifications that Assistly/Desk.com didn’t think about:

• Relaunching and rebranding a popular product without warning is amateurish. This alone clearly is the biggest issue: No one knew this was happening. People who base their workflow on patterns and systems do not enjoy having all of that crumpled up in front of them and trashed is…well…it sucks. Using a system for years and having it changed without your knowledge feels like someone changing your workflow without your consent, and it’s no way to treat loyal customers.
• Claiming 37signals, Grooveshark, Spotify and others just “love” Desk.com is a flat-out lie. Those customers loved Assistly, not Desk.com. Using testimonials of a product you used to have for a new product no one has used yet is dishonest and downright insulting.
• Not telling any partners, power users or friends of this coming change is disrespectful to customers. Yeah yeah, I’m whining because I didn’t know it first. I get that, and if I were on the Assistly team, I’d brush off all the negative reaction with that conclusion. But no, really, I was a HUGE advocate of Assistly, personally turning over and converting more than 20 of my own customers to the product. What a greater advocate I could have been – how much more excited! – had you just freaking told us all in advance.
• Claiming Desk.com has had 99.96% uptime over the last year is a lie. How could it? Now, Assistly had that uptime, that’s clear, but Desk.com launched January 31, 2012. This is patently an untruth.

I can’t, in good conscience, recommend Assistly or Desk.com to anyone – mostly because Assistly doesn’t exist anymore and Desk.com is all of 12 hours old. We’ve asked Assistly to remove all references to CoSupport on their site and are no longer an Assistly partner. To continue as one would be a bad investment for our company.

It is a huge BUMMER to me and to the rest of the CoSupport team because we all loved Assistly. So much of this could have been prevented with an email that said, “WHEN YOU WAKE UP TOMORROW THINGS WILL LOOK DIFFERENT.” I’m shouting because all day, my customers have been shouting this at me.

But the good news is, there are other helpdesk programs out there we can learn to like and have trust in, and start transitioning our customers to. And as it stands none of them are in the business of rebranding or renaming themselves without notice.

We hope?