Bizzare Business Behavior

Bizzare Business Behavior

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As a business owner myself (and an engineer), I've been trying to map out just what has been going on with the blog entries and concomitant treatmeant of the M. Linden thread in the forum. Here's the chain of events as I see it:

1. Jack, the land chief, comes out of nowhere on the blog with an announcement of a 66 percent price increase to his company's most popular product, a move that will negatively effect thousands of the company's most dedicated customers. No forewarning, not surveys, no investigation into users or customers needs, and vague and unsubstantiated charges of abuse. Done in a pretty breezy manner.

2. Storm of customer protest ensues.

3. Newly-minted CEO comes out with a second blog message, saying, not to worry, we'll stage this over time, but the price rise will still take place. Please discuss this in a special forum thread. A bit condescending.

4. CFO makes a few casual comments in the forum thread that answer specific questions and seem honest ("hey, I'm just the CFO here".

5. CEO makes another forum entry saying, thanks for all your entries, I appreciate the support, Jack the Land Chief will be summing this forum up with some answers.

6. Grand Poo-Bah of the company, Robin, SVP, jumps into the forum thread a few entries later, deus ex machina, and declares "this forum is closed." No explanation. Nice entry, but sort of reminded me of Zeus casting lightning bolts down from Olympus. In a nice way.

7. Jack the Land Chief makes no appearance.

8. Then, there's a business as usual type of blog entry from Jack.

This is all, from a business management standpoint, incredibly bizzare behavior.

It's either incompetently uncoordinated or brilliantly executed to screw over the customer.

Analysis of all this could lead to many alternative scenarios. Here's my pet alternative: M. wanted to increase revenue, Jack popped of his intitial message without authorization, the CFO just kind of stumbled into it, Jack decides to bail out, but when the Founder and Grand Poo-Bah found out...he cut it off.

Bottom line: I think someone at LL has finally realized that this was a major mistake, and damage control has to begin immediately.

Nice! Only thing I'd say is that Robin is a she, as far as I've been lead to believe.

Mass alienation has ensued, customers are going to alternatives. People here with too much vested interest are starting smear campaigns of said alternatives followed by bullying tactics (I am not naming names or acts, have seen many examples of this made publicly in world not to me personally).

Customers remaining here are downsizing or trying to follow rats off the ship.

Steerage of customer base on the expensive (should have done the maths first kiddies, if you didn't have the resources then you shouldn't have advertised what you couldn't supply, false advertisement when you said 3750 prims and you surely knew you couldn't manage it) to the desperate (mainland falling falling falling and no one wanted it).

Mainland must be filled = make it seem the sensible alternative so that when viable this can be hiked too - mainland tier SHOULD have been raised in reasonable increments all along over the years, this would have been supported and tolerated by a reasonable and satisfied customer base.

Totally cavalier attitudes have always been the norm, of course. However, with any entertainment based system you have to have liquidity and customer flow. Liquidity is clearly a problem, customer retention and loyalty should be your number one priority to get by in times of a global economic downturn.

<looks at this mess>

Can only assume that they are wanting to become a provider sooner rather than later, and that they have enough corporate backing to do so and ditch the hassle and inconvenience of these pesky "customers". Great! So long as you don't have resources dealing with loads of free accounts and people running a ton of bots to make empty places seem like they are worth hanging around in.

...

Add into that Mono making things absolutely dreadful from the gameplay experience both on and off OS (sorry, "ha ha screw you" sims) - frankly, when I came in last night my experience in SL was the same as it was in other (beta) environments except that it was full of people in the welcome area trotting out lots and lots of bad language and abuse, racism, one avatar named Adolf spouting about Hitler and how the Nazi "was in us all" and the endless cry of "how can I have sex?" along with "pay me". That's your welcome area, LL. Your welcome area. In times past I'd have reported that but to be honest I really don't care any more.

Klang has absolutely hit the nail on the head, just like him I can't see whether it's incompetence or by-design flim flam. Judging by recent events personally, I can see that this attitude has also been adopted by some of the longer-established residents also.

Never mind. *~*walks away whistling "Because I used to love her, but it's all over now"*~*

Hey... with all those 16m2 plots now available after the Ad farm clearance sale.. LL have got to watch land prices... Could and Would only happen on the Mainland. Private Isls don't suffer that stuff... why? Because the owners care for their customers. After 4 years of watching those For Sale signs going round and round, taking up valuable CPU time.. gonna sort of miss them.

Lol

Interesting. As someone who's spent many years working in multinational companies (and as it happens also an engineer), this business behaviour actually strikes me as, although not particularly transparent, very standard.

Here's a scenario I can see:

1. Data shows a decrease in FPS performance following the introduction of the OS on a large scale.
2. Investigate the cause, the OS are being used in a way that in hindsight should have been predicted, possibly wasn't.
3. Try to improve the performance of the sims (data again shows this happens but it was limited)
4. Understanding the cause of the problem, rentals and residential, also shows that the estate owners can pull in $100-$125 a month in rental.
5. Chase a cut of that, and/or drive a scaling down through price increase
6. in response to predictable complaint, compromise and split the increase. "Only" $20 a month might keep some, at least for 6 months, followed by an "only" $30 increase.

On the communication side of things
1. Announce a 67% price increase and expect a significant backlash. Go into the plan with "back downs" in place. Price reduction, grandfathering, incremental. Standard negotiating with employees, go high, negotiate down.
2. Announce the counter offer. Anyone who is legitimately using the OS for open water will be unaffected by the prim reduction and keep the price, so some of the rebels are now out of the mix.
3. Split the price increase, $95 in January. Clever price break. Most people with a full OS will be paying over $95 already with estate manager mark up. So the land users now have a 6 month break, IF the estate owners sacrifice some of their profit. Attention of users turns to what the estate manager is doing.
4. Announce the change. Watch the discussion. It's going around in circles, shut it down and let it die out. Negotiations are over.

Now on the even less transparent, so this is purely speculative.

Why $125 a month, right on the concierge figure? Clear out the estates, people give up their sims because the $150 etc is too much. Change the rules that anyone can own in response to the downturn to bring people back. Higher price for buying new OS is already in place, people buy again.

To the point people will make about extra people required to service if more have concierge. Maybe so. Say 2000 people take up the offer, that $100k a month more than current income. A large estate manager has 100 sims? So on a balance of customer support, 20 new employees. Call center employee earns what? Say $800 a week, which is probably on the very high side, so $3200 a month, total if they employed 20 people at this rate, $64k a month, so still $36k a month extra tier, plus server use reduction savings.

Economically it starts to show potential.

Business structure wise, estate owners hold a significant amount of the land holdings, so as a group of they have an influence. Break that influence into lots of individual landholders, and the ship now starts to be run by LL. It's like having a 2500 small shareholders, rather than 100 large ones.

Bottom Line business decisions that could be being made:
1. Improve performance through reduced usage
2. Decrease costs through server reduction
2. Maintain income through a price increase
3. Prices people will pay have already been determined through Estate owner charges
4. Take the business back from the "sub contractors"

Well, this might make some sense, if only: 1) Linden's data made any sense, 2) we had explicitly agreed never to use most of those prims which Linden DID explicitly allow to us, and 3) maybe if we all were employees and not consumers.

Which all goes to say, this must be good for business, if you are a corporate lawyer.

After the forum discussion, I am still not convinced that performance has suffered due only to openspaces. It's too easy to say anything whatsoever is due to openspaces when they make up almost half of the land in use (or is it more)? Linden could as easily blame it on the weather. What about Mono? What about Havok4? What of Linden using measurements that some find confused to begin with?

Whatever Linden says they did or did not foresee is not for them to hold over our heads. If they offer one thing on paper and take it away, they have switched after money was paid. They can buy out the agreement, or else.

I don't think Linden has said anything positive about seriously grandfathering.

And if we are employed by Linden, then I'm going to sue for back wages, too. Bad analogy!

Yes, I agree there is a certain logic behind it. I think there are limits even for businesses in the area of ethics, though. If this is standard, then it's time to set a new standard.

Do I read you correctly, you're saying you think LL will make homesteads available for anyone, not just regular sim owners? Well IF they'd do that, the whole thing might actually work and make sense (though the price increase would still be VERY steep), but I don't see that happening, do you? Did I miss something?

It's not my post, but... I had the impression she was implying that Linden might make them available to everyone *after* they force as many people as possible off open spaces. So that they might become available, yes, but with a new start fee for everyone (good for the next 6 months if luck holds, etc. etc.).

Or that is what I imagined, when I read it.

This is doubtlessly the plan, so it can be presented as "Hey, we listened!"

People will fall for it no doubt, cynical as it is. Good luck to them, it won't hoodwink me though.

I said the data shows a decrease in region performance after the large scale introduction of OS, which is does. There was also an increase in calls to concierge at the same time. Without the details behind these peaks it's just a data trend that shows around the introduction of OS there was a clear change in performance. A business would then investigate the change in more detail. Given there is a trend showing improvement, it's not unreasonable to assume LL were investigating and addressing it.



Really? A business makes decisions that impact the number of employees, company merges, head count reductions, redundancies, pay increases, etc. This decision impacts the earnings of the estate holders, not quite employees, maybe a better analogy would have with a middle man agency, but still income related impact and they are now in a position where they need to decide to what % they pass on to the end user.





It may not come down to a lack of ethics, just a miss calculation of the marketplace and impact. Quarter of the prim available could reasonably be expected to use quarter of the server, so x4 same as a full sim. But, those of us on OS sims for residential are probably using 3000+ prim or more, 80% of the allotment, and likely have scripts turned on. A lot of the residential full sims also likely use the 80%+ of prims also, but a lot of the other full sims possibly don't, and many turn scripts off, especially on Linden Land, so the usage average could be down. The simple calculation of a quarter could have a complete miss judgment. LL wouldn't be the first business in history to totally screw up a market place projection. And when any other business does it, they have to look at how to manage it, most often through a revised price for high selling, or deletion for low selling.



You read correctly. As I said though, I'm purely speculating on this and looking from a business perspective of what could make sense.

Step 1: Cost cut, reduce server use and determine what the real market at these prices could be. The phase one price increase will actually give a reasonably clear picture of this since estate prices will be very close to $125 a month in many cases.
Step 2: Bring the market back up with an improved product, faster servers, full ownership, and concierge care.

"Step 2: Bring the market back up with an improved product, faster servers, full ownership, and concierge care."

Ok I had to snicker at this one. Show of hands how many have either been ignored by concierge or flat had them hang up on you?

Happened to my partner repeatedly

As I have said repeatedly, when I am training new starters I use my experience with LL's support staff (post Live Help) as evidence. For the couple of nice and helpful people there's been a lot more bumbling, fobbing off, rudeness, not listening and abrupt termination of the chat. I should point out that as Customer Service training is my RL main bread and butter I was not being unreasonable at any time.

When this thing behaves nearly as bad as flakey beta products taking their first steps on two feet ...

User: "Hi my computer is doing <insert problem here>"
Help Desk: "Have you tried rebooting?"
User: "Yes, I figured you'd suggest that so I have tried rebooting 5 times already and it hasn't fixed the problem"
HelpDesk: "Oh, did you shut it down or shut restart"
User: "I have tried both, neither has worked"
Help Desk: "Oh, could you please try rebooting again now while you are on the phone"
User: "OK, shutting it down now"....waits....."Ok I've rebooted. Being on the phone doesn't seem to have helped, it's still not working"
Help Desk: "Um....I'm not sure. I'll have to talk to my supervisor who is on the phone right now."
User: "That's OK, I'll wait"
Help Desk: "He/she could be a while. I'll call you back when he/she is available"
User: "um...ok...I guess"

LL is just in line with standard practice for computer help desk service.

Pfffft! I've had people swear at me for asking whether the mains is switched on "Do you think I'm stupid? RANT RANT RANT" .....PAUSE ........" Oh it's started working on its own now, thanks"

Well perhaps that is so, but I am used to delivering a MUCH much better service than that personally. I expect that where I work the guys will give it 101%, as is my manager expecting it of them and of me. If the guys don't know what they are doing then as far as I am concerned the buck stops with ME, and it's down to ME to make sure that they have the resources, training, backup and confidence. However, my team aren't scattered all over the place/working from home/having the Tao to justify crap service.

FWIW it's more like the conversation I had with one of BT's sales people trying to flog me another long contract with a BT Home Hub who started telling me all about how the router was "specially designed to work with BT" but nearly had kittens when asked how much he knew about Speedtouch routers and why they were generally such bad news for the UK market. I wasn't nasty about it (and I am not overly techie) but to give him his due he said "Ah you sound like you know what you're on about there." Also to give him his due the terrible speeds we were getting seemed to miraculously clear up within 20 minutes of the call so fair play to him.

The setup of LL's customer support is NOT in line with most other IT support helplines insofar as structuring. If it's in line with service you're getting (that's a generic you, not neccessarily Natasha) then vote with your feet when you find something better.

I'm sorry Ciaran it won't happen next time I call you

I've always had excellent service for Concierge live support. Today I had a person who didn't know something, and my own suggestion fixed the problem (I was lucky), but I've never had anything but courtesy, pleasantness and, when possible, solutions.

I have to agree, all of my experiences with LL conceirage support have been pleasant and successful.

I've just been trying to deduce what the desicion-making process is at the top of the pyramid. There seems to be no process, or, at best, a pooly coordinated one based on mis-commuincation.

Or, a cynical and concerted effort based on cold-blooded business logic and engineering analysis of data gathered over time.

The evident confusion of LL's decision makers, and the mixed messages being sent to the customer base, indicate the former rather than the latter. It seems to me that the actions that have been taken are a combination of "post hoc, ergo propter hoc" reasoning, i.e., we sold all of these upgraded openspaces and now we have problems so that must be it, and a badly thought-out response to that invalid conclusion, i.e., institute an astronomical increase in prices without consulting the customer base in order to drive out users, or drive them to another product, e.g., mainland sims.

I just don't think that LL, as a corporate entity, has the sang froid to to put into action some of the coldly-calculated business plans being bandied about in our speculations.

But it is all interesting!

IF, and since nothing has actually been suggested by LL that this is going to happen so it's a big IF, they make OS available to everyone, take the Full prim sim restriction away, I think this is actually a step of improved service for the end users.

Think about it, many of us have paid for our OS through either an up front payment or increased tier, and yet we don't own them. Estate owners can at any time, and this has already happened to some, shut them down and the sim is gone.

The change would be that for what many of us already paying we have complete ownership of the land, no covenant, no middle man.

So the next question, and the part that makes it seem coldly-calculated and a money grab, IF this is the LL plan, why not just announce it and let us all take over the land we are already on?

How? I don't own the land, the estate owner does. He has to agree to sell it to me. If he agrees to sell it to me, then I pay for it again, at a price he decides on. If he refuses to sell it to me and I buy direct, I pay for it again, either way I'm paying for the sim.

With the hiked up tier rate, if I abandon the land to buy my own, then the estate owner is stuck with the additional tier, on land that will be almost unsaleable. So he either shuts down the sim, or he cuts his losses and negotiates a price that's under what a new sim would cost me. He comes out ahead because he's selling me something that's already been paid for, I come out ahead because I then have full ownership of the sim and my monthly payment will have only marginally increased. Plus, I then have the option to lease to others if I choose.

If I was an estate owner this direction would be a disaster, but as an end user, IF OS are made available to everyone, then I come out ahead.

I rarely use live congierge suport but technical suport from congierse always brings someone to the sim if needed or given explanations if things can't be fixed or fixes itself over time, usualy within a few days, sharp contrast to the premium suport tickets that can take weeks and sometimes give a cut and past answer

Yes, I understand that there are "managerial" sorts of decisions. It is still unrealistic to compare us to employees of Linden.

Many employment contracts are now "at will," where either side can withdraw at any time. They can withdraw for a good reason, a bad reason, or no reason. However, when we pay Linden as consumers, we should be able to expect something more than a wishing well. I think that is why they have attempted to present a technical explanation for changing their tune. I do not think that explanation can allow them to throw away 80% of their promises. It is for a court to decide, but I don't think so.

Actually, they are treating us more like homeless, unpaid, desperate gypsies. They think we should have to try out whatever conditions they make affordable for us. Now they say, time for you to tear down all your work and move to the next one. We give them our time, worry about their bugs, and get nothing to keep but sly compliments. We may want land to work on, but we are not gypsies. We're not even regular employees. The rules are not the same!

I think LL have imported all the IP help line Indian speaking help support companies.

Fair play to them, they had me buy and install a new modem/router, rewire the phone line, wait 48 hours for an engineer that never turned up, reinstall my OS twice (2nd time from a freshly formatted HD), turn off all my firewalls, virus checkers etc.. then after 5 days, I got an email... sorry for the delay in responding, all our European servers were off line. For you patience, we will deduct one weeks service charge, divided by 12 monthly payments. Enjoy our new service.

The email btw, was the first thing on my screen, after the service was available, dated 3 days prior.

This must be what people mean when they talk about sang-froidian slips.

Perzactly!

They just don't seem like a colded-blooded bunch on the outside....but on the inside...?