This is Signal vs. Noise, a weblog by 37signals about design, business, experience, simplicity, the web, culture, and more. Established 1999 in Chicago. Follow us on Twitter for more information on our products.

I love this idea and it’s practices like this one that gives me a ton of respect for you guys.

That said, you may want to consider a comparable tool for Sortfolio. As a paying subscriber, I sent an email to support on December 15th and never received any sort of reply.

This is great.

I second the concern for Sortfolio – but that’s another topic ;)

@37signals

This is very ironic …

I assume this app would indicate a big frown from Groupon after just yesterday them firing Jason Fried off the border of directors.

Reason why I hear they let Jason go:

- Jason unwisely sticking to the mantra of never selling (turned down $6 BILLION from Google) and

- Approving what many site as the most controversial (and negative sales impacting) Super Bowl commercials ever.

@Jake Web

What does it have to do with customer support??

Well done guys, thanks for sharing this with us and let’s hope that makes a positive impact on current and new customers.

Not sure how this thread took on such a negative turn.. personally I am a huge fan of 37signals and Smiley just proves that they are continuing to innovate not just with technology – but with their business culture!

Noooow…. when are you guys going to make this commercial for the rest of us exact-date-wise? We want to implement it on our sites as well.

This is cool guys. Nice work.

Oh, it’s not a new product.

That confused me because I went to the web site looking to see how much it’d cost to use.

tsk, tsk, tsk… What’s your beef

First, the thing with Jason and Groupon… who gives a shit ... I’m sure Groupon would stand behind his contributions while being on the board.

Second, this thing about DHH stealing? Again, who gives a shit Even if they did get an idea from somewhere else (and I am not saying they did… cause I have no clue), 37s did not take some idea and turn it around as a product to sell and profit from. They made an internal product… big deal.

Guys, this is awesome! Really nice work! :D

Great implementation guys.

Keep on building great products. The Jakes will keep complaining about it, but it’s certainly not truly “your stuff” they’re complaining about. I’m sure it’s a bit deeper than that (i.e. themselves).

@Jake – Haters gonna hate.

Hey guys, I hope my concern didn’t set an unfortunate tone and that I’m not lumped in with JW.

I’m not at all surprised to see DHH get back with me so quickly, I’ve already e-mailed him and let me say again that I have a ton of respect for 37 because of this very sort of practice and responsiveness.

@Jake Webb

That’s an old issue and already sorted out. Nobody stole anything, the idea is 1, no rocket science 2, worth nothing alone. Not to mention Smiley is not being sold, and maybe never will.

Oh, and the designer of Nicereply is me, not the guy with the blogpost, you must have misread something.

Anyway, kudos for this wonderful page guys! It shows that people like to show off their business culture and support quality, which is something we should focus on probably.

Awesome! I can imagine a world where every company would do that, it would be so much better.

What’s your support system? Is it Basecamp or something else?

@37signals

On the Smiley web site it says,

“Ratings from 37signals support trainees are not included above. Ratings are added once someone has trained on 500 tickets.”

Why don’t you include the ratings of ALL of your support tickets?

Are you implying that if I email support, and if the person assigned to my ticket just so happens to be a “support trainee” that my opinion/rating/satisfaction does not matter to be recording?

Good idea, nice design, useful metric.

Plenty of companies don’t do this (or something like it) because they know they won’t like what they see. I was going to say it was “brave” of 37s, but I bet it actually didn’t take much courage at all. If you’re confident that you’ve shaped your business to value customer happiness above all else, and that spirit is shared by every team member, then this is just a sensible thing to do.

@37signals – is there a “reason” message associated with each rating? For instance, I’d love to be able to click on one of the ratings and see what the given reason behind it was.

Kudos, gents.

Haha, banner day for fail criticisms here.

Neat idea!

@JF I understand, that is a valid concern. Perhaps there’s still room for improvement here, though.

Idea: Add a checkbox that let’s people opt-in to making their message public on smiley.

Custom Ink, for example, shares uncensored customer reviews, and it works really well for them.

I expect results, Fried! Not excuses!

Fascinating. So without sharing specifics, what kinds of events tend to generate unsmileys? If it’s an issue where you can’t help the customer but explain thoroughly, how do customers respond?

Hey Jason,

Put me down for a frowny face.

I sent you an email on Feb. 1 that you never replied to requesting a little help on my bootstrapped Chicago startup. I get that you’re a busy guy, but even a simple “Sorry, can’t do it” response would have sufficed – especially after spending $1,000 on the master class in November.

I’m not mad, just disappointed.

Anthony

@Jake Webb

That’s ridiculous if you think one person can sway the board for a decision such as a 6B buyout. Boardroom policies are a process that stem from a discussion and interaction, not something as simple as a tally of votes. And they don’t just happen during meetings, either…

Interesting.

Particularly interested in the wording being used on the email itself.

For example, you ask customers to “rate my reply”. A reply is only a small part of a ticket, a support interaction. Are you actually tracking individual reply ratings, or is it just semantics and you’re actually doing it per ticket?

What’s the thinking behind the median choice? Questioning the usefulness of knowing about, “OK” particularly when you’ve already set the bar with “definitely could have been better”, which essentially means those with more scrutiny will choose the median even though they were happy with the response.

To me personally “our product is so good that you don’t need support” appeals more than “our support is awesome”. But that’s just me.

@Vojto: “Our product is so good that you don’t need support”

Only time support isn’t needed is if you don’t have enough customers. Got nothing to do with the awesomeness of the product.

Wow. This is a milestone event in the world of customer service. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like this done before. It reminds me when I first started seeing companies allow reviews of their products, good and bad, to appear on their own website. A public-facing “smiley score” may become service delivery equivalent. Bravo.

37 Signals has always been on my short list for technology and product leadership, but now you’re kicking ass with service delivery and transparency. May every customer buy from companies like yours.

Special props for Michael and his team for earning all those smiles on the front line.

Basic. Simple. Executed. Clever. Nice one & good luck with evolving it & enjoying what you discover. Sam

@Berserk

“Only time support isn’t needed is if you don’t have enough customers.”

Google seems to do okay without providing Support and I think they are just a little bit bigger than 37signals.

Berserk

Yeah sure, I didnt mean it literally.

I still feel like they are just showing off with their support instead of putting that effort into something useful. Of course, its appealing to dumb users who are used to call hotlines instead of thinking, and Im pretty sure most of users are like that, but not me, I want product that works.

daw, when I saw the word “public” I was hoping you were making this available to the public to use. Darn, looks so nice! :/

@Jake Webb,

The link you posted accusing 37signals of stealing ideas seems to be dead.

Don’t you think it’s a little ironic that the headline post at this very moment is: “3 Features everyone must borrow from Facebook”?

@Elliot

Ok that happens to be my website, I didnt make Nicereply, Im just the guy who told them theyre charging too much.

Then 37signals made the same thing in a day, and I was pointing out 500$/m is too much. (biggest plan).

There wasnt a word about copying, and also the authors didnt accuse anyone.

As you can see from my deadline I believe there is nothing wrong borrowing ideas as I called it, as long as were talking about simple ideas. Copying whole concept is something different.

37signals did not copy from Nicereply, they did not copy the whole concept (nicereply is a saas) they did use the same idea, but come on, theres no origil author or anything.

If you really wanna know, this happens to me all the time that I come up with idea and see it somewhere else the next day. On one of my projects I came up with live comments, implemented it as experimental feature with nodejs (doesnt really work) and a few days later I see facebook has the same thing.

Should Iaccuse Facebook fior stealing my idea?

And again, no one is accusing anybody, its just what you trolls made up.

“Google seems to do okay without providing Support and I think they are just a little bit bigger than 37signals.”

I’m pretty sure that Google’s customers (as in paying) expect support.

E.g. Google Apps for Business has 99.9% uptime guarantee SLA and 24/7 support.

@Vojto: As someone who very rarely uses support I certainly agree with that point.

I thought that 37s doesn’t care what customers think…

FYI , there’s a typo in the example support email—says “within the each of the project templates” instead of “within each of the project templates.”

@Anthony Cerra

“I get that you’re a busy guy, but even a simple “Sorry, can’t do it” response would have sufficed – especially after spending $1,000 on the master class in November.”

Maybe that’s Jason Fried’s way of “Getting Real”.

Definitely ass-hole’sh though.

@Anonymous Coward,

My comment was more of a knee-jerk reaction to the situation than a statement about Jason’s character. After thinking about it for a little bit I realized that he’s running a multi-million dollar business and heavily involved with Groupon, a multi-billion dollar business. My email probably fell through the cracks. It happens. One thing I’m learning (the hard way) about entrepreneurship is that you can’t take things personally. What does it accomplish?

You know, this is truly brilliant. May I offer a suggestion? Simple as it sounds, wouldn’t it be nice if when you moused over one of the faces, a one line comment would be displayed in a speech bubble?

Just a thought.

Well, I’m impressed that Jason and DHH are all over this thread, and I for one, am a huge fan of Basecamp, 37 Signals in general and Rework. They’ve got great business minds, and have a great concept in their software, it’s helped transform our business as we’re a small company with people spread out all over the globe, and speaking two different languages.

I just wanted to give a shout out, because I see a lot of negative comments, I’ve always been impressed with how fast 37s gets back to me, and I have found their products to be brilliant.

Big fan – look forward to watching where you guys go next.