Ask HN: Doing research on a fitness-tracker app. What features would you want?  - brown9-2

As a side project, I am trying to build a "better" webapp for tracking personal fitness, nutrition, goals, activities, etc.
I've tried several sites (DailyBurn, FitDay, DailyMile, LiveStrong, etc) and I've found that each seems to be missing a few features that I would like to see.<p>My initial goal is to be able to build something that is useful for me and fits my goals (track workouts, graph my progress over time, easily be able to enter nutrition info, but not be forced into pre-defined concepts of how I want to breakdown what I want to track).
As a community of like-minded individuals, I'm really curious what other HN readers - who I figure have likely tried many of the same webapps out there, and have the same interest in being able to track their data - would be interested in seeing from such a webapp.
Would you mind taking a survey I've put together about your experiences with fitness/nutrition webapps, what you liked, what you found lacking, and what features you would want in a perfect tool for this? The survey is at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/R3XVVKB
Thanks! <comment><AUTHOR> Like ryanelkins, I only answered the first 2 questions in the survey because the rest didn't really pertain to me. I've checked out many of those apps but never became a real user. That being said, there are a couple of things that I think could be killer features.

On the working out side, I want an app that intelligently tracks what I'm doing. For example, I could strap it on my arm while I bench press, and the accelerometer detects my reps etc. Not a trivial thing to do, but for me this would be incredible.

As far as nutrition goes, I've often dreamed about a service that taps into credit card purchases (via Yodlee API) to give a rough estimate of nutritional intake. For example, a purchase total of $6.47 at Taco Bell could be items X, Y, or Z which has an average of 650 calories. Once again, not a trivial problem to solve but very very valuable. Good luck, once you get an MVP I would love to test it out.

</comment><comment><USER2> I tried to take the survey but I guess you really only want responses from people who has used these sorts of apps before (which is fine). I answered 'No' to the first two, which means there is really no answer fro the next 3, which were all required.

The only experience I have with something like this is when I lift weights. I write out everything I want to do in a note pad beforehand, then I record my actual results - exercise, sets, reps, weight. I use it to remember where I am and how I can improve. If I want to graph this to see progress in a particular exercise I then have to manually enter it all into something like Excel.

It would be nice to be able to set clear goals - both short term, medium term, and long term, and track my progress towards them. It would be nice to receive encouragement along the way. Especially for those who work out alone, to give a little boost to the motivation level.

<comment> brown9-2 _I tried to take the survey but I guess you really only want responses from people who has used these sorts of apps before (which is fine). I answered 'No' to the first two, which means there is really no answer fro the next 3, which were all required._

Thanks for the feedback, this should be corrected now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Clickable: <http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/R3XVVKB></comment>


Umbrella-sharing startup loses most of its 300,000 umbrellas in its first weeks - <AUTHOR> http://shanghaiist.com/2017/07/10/umbrella-sharing-fail.php <comment><USER2> Why are they called sharing companies? You are renting things. Sharing is when I give my neighbor something or let them borrow my tools.

It seems all companies are wanting customers to lease or rent their products nowadays. Cars leases, cellphone installment plans, Spotify/Apple Music/Pandora, SaaS products, renting instead of buying homes...

What happened to ownership? I feel the consumers always loose money and only gain temporary convenience. Yet I still "rent" some things regardless of my thoughts, it's the only "better" option in some cases.

<comment><USER3> The cases for which these companies are made are usually the "better" ones.

I'm not going to buy a new car or house every time I fly into D.C. or Los Angeles for the week, I'll just use Airbnb or Uber.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> According to the article they are charging 19 yuen for something that costs (presumably at scale) 60 yuen and have no real way to ensure they don't get stolen this way. Not sure what they really expect :\

<comment><USER5> No they are not. It is a deposit. The price is 1 yuan per hour. (50 jiao per half hour)

<comment><USER6> A deposit is something you get back when you return the item. A price/cost is something you never get back because you do not return the item.

Regardless of what the credit card statement or receipt says, you pay 20 yuens and get to keep an umbrella, so "price" is the right description.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I am not sure how they thought this would succeed, unless they plan on pivoting into the most distributed umbrella retailer ever.

Umbrellas are too cheap to defend with technology. Something like GPS wouldn't help recover umbrellas in a cost effective way, maybe in some future where GPS receives are a penny apiece, but not today.

The only way I see to deal with the problem of people keeping umbrellas is to bill people who take them. Get their credit card or other payment information and let them know when they spend their quarter, or whatever, on the umbrella that if they don't return by a certain time it they will be charged for it. Then you just accept that you are an online retailer with a storefront of everywhere.

Even then this presumes that somehow the umbrella is unusable without registering, how do you make that happen? I will just presumed they solved that one.

<comment><USER8> >Umbrellas are too cheap to defend with technology. Something like GPS wouldn't help recover umbrellas in a cost effective way, maybe in some future where GPS receives are a penny apiece, but not today.

I wouldn't go as far as locating them, but keeping track of them using technology seems feasible. How about having an NFC tag implanted to the umbrella to make sure it is returned?

<comment><USER9> I bet you'll find that ppl will rip out the chip and return just that, unless there's a human checking the returns.

<comment><USER7> Do you think there are enough disreputable people to make that a problem?

I mean it chip has a unique ID or its not doing its job, and you get the payment info of each user. There are incentives to not stealing these things, so you are really just worried about vandals and immoral penny penchers trying to skirt the system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> wow "14 other competitors in the umbrella-sharing industry"

So how do the others do it?

I could only imagine some simple number lock unlockable when you scan a QR and pay a deposite, but I don't know how return could work. Maybe it could be verified by someone else unlocking it from the same place you claimed to have left it? And if nobody ever unlocks it, because you just took it home, it flags you as a thief after 3 times?

Or slightly snowbally: you pay 5 dollars to get an umbrella with a number lock and only get it back when someone else rents it again. This way you have to make sure to put it where it gets used.

Ah, dedicated stations of course work, but take away some of the organic simple nature [http://umbracity.com/](http://umbracity.com/)

edit: one with number locks: (I wonder how the return works) [https://www.shanghaiexpat.com/news/umbrella-sharing-comes- sh...](https://www.shanghaiexpat.com/news/umbrella-sharing-comes-shanghai)

<comment><USER11> That kind of system seems similar to how Aldi encourages people to return shopping carts with quarter "deposits" or let others put them back for a quarter.

<comment><USER10> But you have to plug it in to the others to get your coun back and there is one initial dock dongle thingy.

Also many supermarkets (at least in germany) start doing some weirdly accurate geofencing with automatic breaks on the carts. I wonder how it actually works. edit: [http://www.gatekeepersystems.com/sol_cc_cc_how_it_works.php](http://www.gatekeepersystems.com/sol_cc_cc_how_it_works.php)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Who funded that idea? Was there like a special Olympics of startups? That is a seriously stupid idea.

<comment><USER13> Some countries specialize in seriously stupid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> At first I thought it was an onion article; its sad for the business but funny headline.</comment>


Buying VMWare Fusion: A lesson in how to drive customers away - <AUTHOR> http://blog.bitquabit.com/2011/02/22/buying-vmware-fusion/

<comment><USER2> I recently bought Parallels, and it wasn't much better. From the email I sent them (after I finally found an email address):

\- When I arrived on the checkout page (from the link in the nice email you sent), you had tacked on a $8 digital backup fee. That is a complete bullshit charge, and you added it by default with no explanation as to what it was, or why I would want it. It was also not particularly obvious whether or not I could _remove_ said add-on. It is a shameless, low class, money grab.

\- I switched my pricing from USD to CAD, and you added $10 despite the two currencies trading at parity (I quickly swapped back, and just paid in USD). Another shameless, senseless money grab.

\- You require my name, home address, email address, and phone number in order for me to purchase downloadable software via Paypal. You do not _need_ any of that information. You _want_ it so that some tool in marketing can have pretty powerpoints. It should be optional. (Making it required simply requires me to make up information; a waste of both our time.)

\- The "send me email spam" checkbox was checked by default. The only reason for this is to get permission to spam people too lazy to pay attention to the checkout. It's another tasteless scam formulated by a greedy, customer hostile executive tool.

\- After purchasing, I entered my serial number, and was informed that I would have to register to receive updates to the software I just purchased. I cannot explain to you how incredibly asinine I find that policy.

\- The registration process once again required information I didn't want to give you (requiring me to give you fake information)

\- After registering, and confirming my registration via email, and entering my email/password combo into the application I was told that I had given invalid credentials, and to try again. (I hadn't. I'm pretty good with copy/paste.) So I guess NO UPDATES FOR ME?

<comment><USER3> wait ... so why did you buy it then?

<comment><USER4> so you think if you buy you can't have complaints? interesting world you must live in.

<comment><USER5> He could have gotten Virtualbox.

<comment><USER6> With the uncertain future that comes from being managed by Oracle now.

<comment><USER7> Not totally uncertain, there's the GPL'd version which contains almost all the functionality non-commercial desktop users would require (except USB 2.0 device speeds). Oracle can derail VirtualBox the trademark, but they can't prevent a fork.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> He guesses VMWare stores credit cards based on them using the last 4 digits to help identify orders. Actually, it is probably Digital River, not VMWare. VMWare uses Digital River to handle actually process orders. (That's why the site he went to for order lookup was findmyorder.com, not vmware.com. Findmyorder.com is a Digital River site).

You can't really infer credit card storage from them keeping the last 4. Merchants need to keep the first 6 and last 4 in order to process chargebacks and refunds. When a customer charges back all the bank tells the merchant is first 6, last 4, and amount of charge back (oh, and the date of the charge back). Furthermore, the amount does not always match an amount the merchant charged. So, the merchant needs to be able to look up orders by first 6/last 4, approximate amount, and date-that-it-must-have-been-before.

PCI allows first 6 and last 4 to be stored unencrypted and kept as part of general customer information. The strict security requirements (encryption, kept off of networks not involved with actually using the card, and so on) only apply to the rest of the digits.

<comment><USER9> Yes, it definitely sounds like a typical Digital River experience. They're really a mess. Microsoft uses them to fulfill online Microsoft Office orders, and it takes so many steps you want to scream.

If there are no other reasons, this is why I want a solid App Store on Windows that has every app I'd want to buy. Seriously; it's just too much trouble to give companies money sometimes!

<comment><USER10> The solution isn't necessarily an App Store on Windows, it's to build better purchasing experiences. You're reasoning is sort of like: "I have serious issues with all GM cars due to shoddy quality, therefore all cars must be manufactured by Toyota because I like them."

<comment><USER11> I think his reasoning is more like "I see a fundamental design flaw in all other cars which Toyota has recognized and addressed in a way that I like, and wish other manufacturers would adopt that solution or one similar to it."

You don't have to agree, but don't poo-poo his desire for a unified, simple application purchasing experience in his OS of choice. That's a customer talking about what they want out of a product.

<comment><USER10> My point was more along the lines of "unified purchasing experience" != "good purchasing experience." You could have all apps unify on a horrible purchasing experience, no?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> wh-uws If you are not in need of customer support the answer to this problem is to use Virutalbox

<http://www.virtualbox.org/>

Its just about as fast, has all the same features (including 3d support) and best of all its free and opensource

<comment><USER12> Virtualbox (I tried with the latest as of late January) would not run Skype for me.

VMware worked immediately.

<comment><USER13> Why would you want to run Skype in virtualbox? Skype runs on Mac, Windows and Linux.

<comment><USER14> Because you don't trust skype not to dick up your real computer?

<comment><USER13> Sounds valid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I actually ended up using a pirated serial after I'd purchased VMWare because it was easier to get than the legitimate one.

<comment><USER16> I use VMWare Fusion all the time. I spent 30 minutes trying to buy it and 30 seconds getting a pirated serial. I think the software is well worth the price and I'd happily give them the money if they could provide a reasonable way for me to do so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've pinged a friend at VMWare about this. It's not her department, but she should be able to pass it along towards the people whose problem it should be.

EDIT: Word's been passed along. Don't know if anything will actually come of it, but (at least some of) the people whose problem it should be are aware.

<comment><USER18> The real test will be whether they've got the sense to spend 20 minutes signing in here and engaging us in dialogue.

<comment><USER19> I don't know that anyone engaged us here, but someone from VMware did engage me over at the blog: [http://blog.bitquabit.com/2011/02/22/buying-vmware- fusion/#c...](http://blog.bitquabit.com/2011/02/22/buying-vmware- fusion/#comment-154505634)

<comment><USER17> I have no way of knowing if that person is the one my friend contacted (not least because I can't view the comments; do I need a Disqus account to see them, or something? That's a bit of a fail, too, IMO.), but I'm thrilled to see they're talking with you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The Humble Indie Bundle games pack did this _so_ well:

\- Very simple purchasing - a single page

\- Perpetual download codes

\- No DRM

</comment><comment><USER21> Yeah... I've been buying VMWare for my team. After buying it twice online, I started buying it from amazon boxed because it's cheaper than the digital version from VMWare and you can still get the stupid rebate they are currently offering. (I hate rebates).

</comment><comment><USER22> This is what's selling me on OS-vendor-provided App Stores. Of course there are many reasons a self-respecting hacker would turn up their nose at such a thing. But product activation and billing really should not be novel experiences in 2011.

<comment><USER23> To be fair, you can do a _lot_ better than Digital River, whose code is largely stuck in 1998. I mean, BCC can phone home to the server to get a registration key without the user ever needing to read their onscreen instructions (quite helpful because they frequently don't). It takes less than a day of engineer time to take 90% of the pain out of this. (Though I don't think that is an option if management has decided to go with Digital River -- then you're pretty much at the mercy of their operation.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> findmyorder.com really looks like your typical phishing site. I don't think I'd be giving them any of my information.

</comment><comment><USER25> [http://css-tricks.com/video-screencasts/75-how-not-to-design...](http://css- tricks.com/video-screencasts/75-how-not-to-design-a-checkout/)

<comment><USER26> So, I watched this whole thing. Then I noticed the URL on the end... Here it is:

<http://download.navicat.com/download/navicat8_mysql_en.dmg>

Go ahead. Click it.

<comment><USER27> You can get newer releases from their page directly, in case anyone wanted to try navicat. It's a pretty good utility, though I personally still like to use the respective SQL server command line utility shells. It's a 30-day trial.

<http://www.navicat.com/en/download/download.html>

<comment><USER28> I used Navicat for along time, and its not bad software. These days though I've been using the free "Sequel Pro" for OS X. Does all the same things I need to do, as long as I'm on a mac. <http://www.sequelpro.com/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Well… I got Parallels as boxed software sent to me (was working from home). Alas, I got an older version, and upgrading required some mind boggling stupidity (some proof of purchase I did not have, some personal details, etc.) So I decided it was not worth the hassle and bought VMWare Fusion (with my own money) online instead.

</comment><comment><USER30> I got my VMWare Fusion key in the email. Two seconds, confirmed. I guess YMMV. I've been a closed beta tester for VMWare Fusion for ~2 years as well.

</comment><comment><USER31> I have been using VirtualBox on Mac and Linux for a couple years now with fantastic results. Easy upgrades and free as in beer and (most of it) as in speech too.

Recently started using Vagrant <http://vagrantup.com/> to configure virtual machines with VirtualBox and Chef. Awesome. I recommend this combo to all devs.

</comment><comment><USER32> You think that's bad, you should hear my experience trying to buy a license to the virtual center for the free version of vmware server in 2009. At one point I had a 3 way call going with VMWare's local vendor and VMWare corporate where they were both denying such a thing as a "free" version of vmware server ever existing.

The last few years of dealing with vmware have shown me quite clearly that vmware doesn't care about little guys. They obviously make all of their money from large business customers.

</comment><comment><USER33> I notice that no one has mentioned Hyper-V yet. While it isn't perfect it is free. Mind you, you do need to be running Windows Server, but if you are already running windows you should consider it.

I am curious how it stands up to all the others. Virtual Box didn't have it in their grid.

<comment><USER34> I've used Hyper-V before and its pretty much garbage compared to VirtualBox and VMWare. 1\. There is no usb device support that I could find, and you can't add any devices besides hard disks that I've seen 2\. No shared folders at all, you need to use smb to have any file sharing capability, short of setting up ftp 3\. They pretty much only support virtualized windows 2008, they have SOME Linux support but thats limited to Red Hat and OpenSuse mostly 4\. You can only install it on Windows Server 2008(well thats a given but its still a drawback) 5\. Its interface isn't the best, I find it really hard to find stuff and everything is in non-obvious locations

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I recently downloaded VirtualBox. It runs Windows perfectly and it's Free software.

</comment><comment><USER36> Thanks for posting this. I use and love VMware products (Fusion now, other products since Workstation 1.0) and I'd forgotten how hair-pullingly painful it was buying Fusion for the first time. This re-jogged those memories.

</comment><comment><USER13> And this is why I use Free Software only. Thanks for the reminder.

</comment><comment><USER37> I'm relieved I will never go through this process. This does not sound like a normal checkout process to me.

</comment><comment><USER38> When I bought November last year, I did get the keys in the confirmation email.

</comment><comment><USER11> I had roughly this same experience with buying VMWare Fusion two years ago. Nice to see they're paying attention to customers.

<comment><USER39> After two years and a rant that happened to get posted to a major tech news site. Doesn't really sound like "paying attention to customers" to me. How many times has this happened in the past two _years_ and why haven't things gotten any better?

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> So, to recap:

\- I bought a product that _needed a license key_ ;

\- in order to use it, I was sent to a _3rd party_ site I had never dealt with before _that provides the keys_ ;

\- the site requires me to enter part of my credit card _as my proof of purchase_ to use it;

\- it then takes me to a totally broken page, which, thankfully, has a license key;

\- that license key is rejected for some indeterminate amount of time by vmware.com _due to a known slowness problem with their key distribution system_ ;

\- once it's finally not rejected, vmware.com still merrily asks me to give it an email that it knows damn well it didn't give me _but still accepts just the correct key from the key distro site anyways_

There, I fixed it so it's not such blog spam, buy software much?

</comment><comment><USER41> I'm sorry, but how is this news worthy?

As far as I can tell, some guy bought a copy of VMWare Fusion with a moderately poor customer experience, can't activate it within the first half hour, writes a blog post to complain and gets his buddies at Fog Creek to upvote.

Why on earth did you think other people would be interested in this?

<comment><USER16> This story is a case study in how not to sell software. This is exactly what I would expect to see at HN.

<comment><USER41> Oh FFS, really? Really??

There are an infinite number of ways to communicate how _not_ to do things. Enumerating them only serves to decrease the entropy rate.

What I suspect is most people enjoyed this article because VMware made a fool of themselves, but not, as you suggest, because it provides an enlightening anecdote that will inspire the reader to avoid a common pitfall and yield an effective checkout process.

<comment><USER42> I suspect you're getting downvoted for your tone, because your point is legitimate:"reversed stupidity is not intelligence" -EY

<comment><AUTHOR> While it is true that "reversed stupidity is not intelligence", that does not mean negative examples are without merits.

Someone once said to me "A smart person learns from their mistakes, a brilliant person learns from other people's mistakes."

Positive examples show you what you should do and how you should do it, but they often leave out _why_. A negative example makes it very clear _why_ you should do things a certain way and avoid doing them other ways.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Public Policy Implications of AI - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/initialized-capital/the-public-policy-implications-of-artificial-intelligence-1df075c49755#.4y012wthx <comment><USER2> "The second is that there needs to be a political or a regulatory response. We need to have a national and an international conversation about redistribution, about safety nets, about measuring this technology and correctly anticipating its arrival. People are aware of this."

With similar motivations, we did some work measuring public perception of AI (to appear in AAAI 2017). Recently, there's been a clear increase in concern about AI displacing human jobs (Figure 3F): [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1609.04904.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1609.04904.pdf)

<comment><USER3> I'm hesitant to generalize the NYT corpus to "public perception". I'd be very curious to see the regional differences within the United States in these trends.

<comment><USER2> Would be very cool! Probably not possible to find data extending back 30 years, though.

And NYT findings are of course not entirely representative, though we did run a small validation on Reddit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Big fan of Jack Clark and his work, from what I gather he is really focusing on trying to help a wide and not particularly technical audience understand the near term implications of socioeconomic change caused by emerging technology.

</comment><comment><USER5> The article doesn't really address dealing with "the AI said so" as a justification for action.

Like if we start using AI to do things like populate no fly lists.

<comment><USER6> One of the advantages of GOFAI, and expert systems in particular, was that their reasoning process was a lot more transparent, and in many cases you could ask them to explain it. Much harder if all you have is dozens of arrays of connexion weights.

<comment><USER7> Perhaps this is more an exposé of human ability to generate rationalizations for chaotic biological workings of their brains, than it is a failing of neural nets to make rational decisions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Great interview. I have been trying to understand how the success of deep learning will affect my career (I started using neural networks in the 1980s: DARPA projects, commercial projects, etc., but now less that 1/2 of my professional time is spent doing deep learning and General machine learning). I am trying to decide whether to toatally jump back into the field to take advantage of a lot of practical work experience, or keep doing general consulting. I am concerned that the field of deep learning is saturated right now.

One small nit-pick about the comment "a young child can see a chicken once, and if you then ask them to draw a chicken, they'll typically be able to. The child has a representation of a chicken from one sighting, and is able to abstract that into a drawing." This hypothetical child watches the chicken, moves his head for a little different view, the chicken is probably moving, etc. There is a lot of training data collected by the child.

<comment><USER9> Hiya, (I'm Jack Clark) - this is a good point. The child probably gets about 50 to several hundred distinct 'frames' of the chicken. Still, a remarkably small number of examples.

<comment><USER10> It would also be a terrible drawing. An adult who had seen many other types of birds would be able to do much better, as they would have learned more abstractions - for example the experience required to condense a complex visual pattern to, say, "mottled".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> AI can engage into financial transactions, especially now with decentralized currencies. At scale that would be really hard to regulate and can lead to a taxation crisis.

<comment><USER12> At scale, a taxation crisis would only be the beginning of all the chaos that would cause.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Hmmm. I thought this was 'censorship week'[1] where everyone was supposed to throw themselves on the "flag" link the moment anything "political" was mentioned.[2]

I can't force myself to do this, but there does seem some mention of the forbidden word here.

\- Ne boltai

1\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108404](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108404)

2\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13140330](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13140330)

<comment><USER5> Ended early: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13131251](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13131251)

<comment><USER13> Odd. I wonder why that el reg article was flagged. Thanks for the link/info.

To all: Please feel free to flag my off-topic comments here - I can't delete the parent. And it seems there's a flagging frenzy anyway.</comment></comment></comment>


Kitty Hawk researching self-flying, fully electric small aircraft in New Zealand - <AUTHOR> http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/352489/flying-taxis-to-be-trialled-in-new-zealand <comment><AUTHOR> I'm certainly dubious about this - for instance how does a self-flying aircraft obey air traffic control commands, or report its own status to ATC or other pilots? Since you don't need a pilot's licence (their claim), will it handle _every_ type of unforseen weather conditions for you? A plane can't just pull over and stop anywhere. Is a plane with only 100km (~62 mile) range really useful vs. driving or public transport anyway? Battery weight must be a major hurdle to greater range.

But I thought it was an interesting article worth posting anyway. We hear a lot about electric and self-driving ground vehicles, but little about the equivalents in aircraft. And they seem to have a real vertical-takeoff "flying car" prototype which is more than Moller Skycar can say after half a century.</comment>


A refresher course in empathy - <AUTHOR> http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3567-a-refresher-course-in-empathy

<comment><USER2> Empathy goes both ways. That customer clearly had none, and furthermore didn't believe the support person when they repeatedly tried to explain things to her. We tend to see things like, say, boxers on their website and we instantly feel a connection to a person where none may be warranted. To unilaterally make that connection with an abusive person is a recipe for unhappiness and disappointment.

I feel reminded about my startup time, we had customers like this. "The website you built doesn't work." \- "Why, what's wrong?" \- "I don't know, but I can't get on the internet today. This is your fault. I want my money back." \- "Sir, if your internet is down, that's nothing we can help you with. Also, I thought things were going pretty good with our project." \- "If you can't help me, you're clearly incompetent. I'm going to sue you. You broke my emails, too." And so on.

A few times we actually sent someone over there to help with (in this example) their faulty DSL connection. This never solves anything. There won't be any gratitude, and the customer will be reinforced in thinking it's your fault. In essence they're being rewarded for abusiveness and unwillingness to think, too. From now on, every time his connection breaks it will be your fault. And you can't bill that time either. Furthermore, while you're sending someone over on the basis of goodwill and empathy, that guy will badmouth you all over town.

Of course, people have bad days, and there can be mitigating factors. But if someone is clearly not listening to a single word you say and is incapable of understanding facts, it's time to let that customer go. I can't say this emphatically enough: it's not worth it. Identifying personally with that person will only make you suffer even more - you have to keep in mind that _they 're_ certainly not making 1% of the effort you're expending on their problem.

<comment><USER3> There is no thumbs up big enough for this. My first thought after reading the article was "what kind of lapdog are you trying to be, stand up for yourself woman!" I immediately felt bad about that because she is trying to be an empathetic person, but how can you empathize with this? Someone tries to help you, you are an jerk to them. Would you keep helping your parents being an absolute jerk, or would you tell them to knock it off, then help them?

I occasionally work with customers nowadays (but spent years in customer service) and I cant help but think this is a person who is going to be worn out by hordes of inconsiderate jerks because they are empathizing too hard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I remember reading "Hire the Right Customers"1), which kind of goes against this notion to try to please everyone. Some customers are just the wrong customers and not worth collecting.

1) [http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch04_Hire_the_Right_Custome...](http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch04_Hire_the_Right_Customers.php)

</comment><comment><USER5> I ran an outsourced IT helpdesk company for many years, as well as online products. We used to get clients like this all the time. Here's how my staff were trained to handle this situation - the support staff would have asked the lady the name of her site, and the background story. Then patiently gotten to the bottom of the issue. After that would then either submit a support ticket on her behalf, or would call the company and put her in touch with them.

Clients like this are very costly, especially if your business model isn't equipped to deal well with this, but all that said, empathy is about feeling what the other person feels. She clearly wanted a fix, so go fix it.

<comment><USER3> But you were billing someone for it, right? They don't really get to do that in this situation. (if you were)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What possible worth would we get from being empathetic with people who can't even understand the difference between ours and somebodyelse website? They are unlikely to become customers, and each support incident cost the company money.

Yeah I am sure there is an emotional reason for it, but I am asking for a cold hearted logic reason.

<comment><USER7> A good, logical reason to be empathetic in all situations would be to help yourself. If you needlessly act negative toward another person, you will be more inclined to be negative about similar situations in the future. You are essentially training yourself to be negative which, I can assure you, bleeds into the rest of your life.

It's important to recognize that even if you don't see value in being empathetic toward a particularly difficult individual, under different circumstances you are someone else's difficult individual. The paraphrased idiom "treat others as you want to be treated" has existed for thousands of years, for a lot of good reasons.

<comment><USER8> That first argument is unlikely to convince someone coming from a cold hard logic standpoint. Coming from a cold hard logic standpoint, that person is going to act in their best interest/companies best interest in all cases (or so the theory goes). I understand where you're coming from, but "Be nice to everyone to train yourself to be nice" isn't the optimal path from the companies perspective.

Though you're second argument is effective in a global community kind of context.

<comment><USER7> I agree that it is likely not a logical reason from the perspective of a company. I was simply providing a logical reason, in general.

Though, an argument could also be made that being a nicer person is definitely a quality that most organizations would applaud, especially in a customer service position.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For a customer that just doesn't get it, I don't see why the dishwasher/vacuum cleaner analogy is bad as long as it's delivered nicely.

<comment><USER10> I doubt the customer failed to understand that the customer support rep thought that the issue wasn't their fault; the customer was getting angry because they thought the rep was wrong.

Analogies don't convince and are often seen as condescending or evasive: "I asked for help, and I get word games"

<comment><USER9> Ahh, see, I was under the impression that the customer was failing to understand. If they think the rep is wrong then that's a whole other problem. If that's the case then you're right, it does come off as condescending.

I'm not sure of the best way to convince a customer (who is wrong) that is questioning the rep's expertise. Provide more data and explain differently, I guess.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Amusingly, this post made a lot more sense when I remembered that boxers are a type of dog.

That said, it's a great post and something that is all too easy to forget when you work with people, who often get angry at you when things aren't going their way. It's really kind of unfortunate, too; most companies have trained people that anger really is the best way to get something. If you yell, you might get a manager, and eventually the company just wants to placate you so that you go away. Now, people just reach for anger...

</comment><comment><USER12> I have a lot of empathy for people that just don't know what's going on -- so I wouldn't make fun of them for the initial mistake; but when someone politely explains something simple to you /twice/ and you're still being a jerk about it, I don't think those people deserve any empathy at all. The customer isn't always right. Sometimes the customer is just an idiot. Kudos to her for her positive attitude, but I don't think the customer deserved her kindness.

</comment><comment><USER13> Speaking of customer support... I'd love to read some good information about how to successfully set it up in a somewhat organized fashion. Tricks, tips, do's and don'ts... as well as some advice on trying to make the proper tradeoffs.

Anyone got good books or other resources they can recommend?

<comment><USER14> A while ago, I listened to a Mixergy interview with the founder of HelpScout. They have a content marketing strategy, and produce a lot of quality free content on customer service issues.

[https://www.helpscout.net/resources/](https://www.helpscout.net/resources/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Today you, tomorrow me.

Just to add content: hardware, software, programming, protocols, networks, chips, cords, formats, and onward. We are in a profession that creates a certain amount of ego once we have overcome an obstacle. There is an endless amount of information with an endless growth rate regarding technology. We are all ignorant -- it is just to what degree and which niche! I still remember 15 years ago and having my feelings hurt on a daily basis on EFnet. It hardened me, but I also learned how to dish out tolerance.

<comment><USER16> > Today you, tomorrow me.

For context, ambiate is likely referring to [http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/elal2/have_you_ev...](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/elal2/have_you_ever_picked_up_a_hitchhiker/c18z0z2)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> When I saw this was on the 37signals blog, I reflexively expected a post by DHH, and now my funny bone is disappointed.

Snark aside, any trick you can use to place the humanity of the other person you're interacting with in the forefront is going to help you avoid snapping at them, which is generally a good thing. The world can always use a little less hostility.

</comment><comment><USER18> Empathy to that level gets expensive! You have to really feel it to do it.

</comment><comment><USER19> TLDR

Even if it's not your issue, you now own the problem. The customer has contacted you guys on this issue before and wasn't given a good enough answer. Now the customer is contacting you guys again in hopes of a better answer. If you don't give a good answer, then the customer may continue contacting you guys. You aren't saving time by brushing the customer off.

You could have saved the day by looking up the information in the first place and relaying that to the customer. If and email isn't doing the trick, then place a phone call.

\----

I used to do tech support for Microsoft Windows and we gave our best effort to give the customer information to fix dang near anything on their computer. Most people who called in were in our area of support, but sometimes we would get people calling in about other products. People saw us as their last line of support, their only lifeline when nobody else could help them.

I think we were effective in this role because more than any other support desk, we had a great big picture view. A support rep for Intuit might know Quickbooks well, but might know nothing about the rest of the system which Quickbooks sits on. So, in some cases they might say "It's a Windows problem" and pawn the issue on us.

I think just talking to people over the phone really helps as well. When you have someone who is so obviously tech challenged, then it's sometimes just that much more difficult when dealing with yet another tech abstraction over basic communication.

So, customer calls in with something we don't support. In a friendly conversation we would explain that big picture view and tell the customer exactly what they need to know when contacting Quickbooks again. Sometimes the issue was so simple we could just Google the answer. Sure, it's wasting valuable support time, but in the end it could have saved time because the customer wouldn't continue to be bounced back and forth.

</comment><comment><USER20> This seems like a story without an ending. A customer did something, she reacted and regretted it. Sure she's saying she should be more empathetic in the future but based off of what? The customer didn't reply after she made the "mistake".

How does she know it would have made any difference? Maybe it wouldn't. Maybe things would have turned out worse. I don't see any evidence of a lesson.

The article she linked to is much more useful IMO: [http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3566-found-in- translation](http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3566-found-in-translation) It explains a technique and why it's worth doing.

</comment><comment><USER21> Goodness, the irony of 37 signals lecturing others about empathy.

[http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/02/douchebaggery.html](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/02/douchebaggery.html)

and from the above article:

[http://codinghorror.typepad.com/.a/6a0120a85dcdae970b0120a86...](http://codinghorror.typepad.com/.a/6a0120a85dcdae970b0120a86db600970b-pi)

</comment><comment><USER22> Great post. Shared it with our support team and everyone appreciated it so thank you!

Proud to say one of the guys came back with this: "she should have just written her the first time: here write [to] these guys instead" :)

</comment><comment><USER23> I recently started to take an empathetic approach to answering customer queries. I noticed their responses changed significantly from angry to accepting.

I remember reading a post on these pages that explained Apple's sales and support methods... to empathize with the customer. One message I got from giving customer feedback was that instead of saying 'No, that is not the problem' when a customer complains, I start by saying 'I understand how frustrating that could be'.

That tone is enough to put the most angered customer at ease. With that approach, I rarely ever require a second response.

</comment><comment><USER24> I kept wondering why they didn't just contact the other company's support _for_ the customer and make sure she was in contact with them. That's the kind of service customers rave about.

</comment><comment><USER25> SVN is in that URL: [http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3567-a-refresher-course- in-em...](http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3567-a-refresher-course-in-empathy)

Does 37signals still use SVN and uses it to host their content directly?

<comment><USER26> I think it is an abbreviation for signals versus noise (s/n) which used to be the title of their blog.

<comment><USER27> it's still called signal vs. noise, but they use the name as heavily any more. From the page header:

You're reading Signal vs. Noise, a publication about the web by 37signals since 1999.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is a wonderful article - too often we get caught up in our bubble of expertise -- most people don't understand basic software/internet architecture. As the Woz said, it's our job as tech workers to make things as intuitive as possible.

</comment><comment><USER29> "From now on, in my mind: Every time there's a challenging case, the customer owns at least two boxers."

A great lesson in how to make empathy something that you know is useful and something that you practice.

</comment><comment><USER30> Lesson learned: don't hire gingers as tech support</comment>


Joseph Kittinger's Parachute Jump from 102,800 ft (31,333 m) - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Excelsior

<comment><USER2> Music video with footage of the jump, by Boards of Canada:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrBZeWjGjl8>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is, quite simply, incredible (from the article):

"[...] hitting a peak of 614 miles an hour, nine-tenths the speed of sound at my altitude."</comment>