WeRecoverData.com Followup

Yes­ter­day I was sur­prised to see an email from a gen­tle­man at WeRecoverData.com ask­ing to speak with me about the expe­ri­ence I had ear­li­er this year when I sent a hard disk for data recov­ery. I was sur­prised most­ly because in May I list­ed them along with Acom­da­ta as a com­pa­ny «not to do busi­ness with». The post itself was a bit more nuanced, but suf­fice it to say I did­n’t por­tray the com­pa­ny in a glow­ing light. The email said that he had read the report of my expe­ri­ence with his com­pa­ny and that he would like to fol­low up.

I just got off the phone with this fel­low, Steven Licht­en­berg­er. Right up front I’ll say that I’m favor­ably impressed with his atti­tude and his atten­tion to the details of my expe­ri­ence. Before speak­ing with me, he spoke to sev­er­al of the peo­ple that I had dealt with to get a more com­plete under­stand­ing of what had hap­pened. I had some appre­hen­sion at first when he told me he want­ed to explain what had hap­pened, sus­pect­ing that I might hear a string of excus­es or that he might try to turn the blame on me. Instead, he quite frankly described the short­com­ings of their intake and cus­tomer ser­vice process­es, and told me what the com­pa­ny had done to address and elim­i­nate these shortcomings.

In busi­ness, apolo­gies are cheap and are worth even less than they cost. What I got today was not an apol­o­gy, but some­thing much more impor­tant: a dec­la­ra­tion of respon­si­bil­i­ty for my expe­ri­ence with his com­pa­ny and a descrip­tion of what had been done to assume that responsibility.

I’ve seen com­pa­nies do a lot of things to address a cus­tomer ser­vice issue: I’ve seen them offer coupons or rebates to entice a cus­tomer back, I’ve seen sales­peo­ple try to lever­age a super­fi­cial per­son­al rela­tion­ship to gloss over a prob­lem, I’ve seen heart­felt (and/or well-act­ed) apolo­gies and I’ve seen promis­es to do bet­ter in the future. Noth­ing is more mean­ing­ful than admit­ting direct­ly, «you’re right, we were wrong, and here’s what we’ve done to make sure it does­n’t hap­pen again».

Even if what I got today was lip ser­vice (I do not sus­pect that it was) it shows that some­one over there gets it. I spoke with this guy for twen­ty-five min­utes and he seemed like a straight shoot­er. I think the amount of effort it takes to fake this kind of integri­ty is greater than the effort to have this kind of integri­ty, so I’m inclined to take it at face value.

Will I do busi­ness with them again? Do I now rec­om­mend them? Good ques­tions. Of course, I hope that I won’t have any need for their ser­vices again. I have a bet­ter back­up sys­tem now than I did then, but you nev­er know what will hap­pen. I’d be inclined to give them anoth­er chance, if only to find out whether the words are real­ly reflec­tive of their actions. There’s so lit­tle integri­ty left in the busi­ness world that it would be some­thing I’d like to see.

Whether I rec­om­mend WeRecoverData.com to some­one else is anoth­er mat­ter. This phone call does­n’t change that my only expe­ri­ence with the com­pa­ny was poor. It would­n’t be right for me to make the about face and offer the com­pa­ny my endorse­ment, but any­one can read what hap­pened and about this call I had today and make a judg­ment for them­selves. Keep in mind too, that this is the only expe­ri­ence I’ve ever had with any data recov­ery com­pa­ny. If you’re count­ing only on me for your infor­ma­tion you should recon­sid­er your strategy.

If you are read­ing this post con­sid­er­ing whether to do busi­ness with WeRecoverData.com, this might influ­ence your deci­sion: Mr Licht­en­berg­er brave­ly sug­gest­ed that I sub­mit any future busi­ness under a dif­fer­ent name. Anoth­er per­son might have told me I should talk to him direct­ly or do some­thing else that might get me pref­er­en­tial treat­ment. Some­one less con­fi­dent that the com­pa­ny’s prob­lems had been addressed would want to man­age my expe­ri­ence by per­son­al­ly mak­ing sure noth­ing went wrong. That he would invite me to bring my busi­ness back to them with­out any spe­cial treat­ment sig­nals a con­fi­dence in his orga­ni­za­tion and in the changes he and his col­leagues have implemented.

It may seem coun­ter­in­tu­itive that fail­ing to offer me spe­cial treat­ment would be prefer­able, but oth­er com­pa­nies should be tak­ing notes; if you want to win back a cus­tomer’s con­fi­dence, bribery ain’t the way to do it. Your integri­ty beats a dis­count coupon every time.