Like many businesspeople, I consider LinkedIn my “main” business network.  The site is my first stop for research, my first to look up a new company and maybe even ask a question or browse the past questions for ideas.   But a little bug somewhere was causing an error when I added new connections.

No problem.  I have a premium account.  I’ve been a member for more than 5 years. They’ll take care of things.

Not exactly.

First came an auto-responder that read strangely like the actual response.   I immediately saw that LinkedIn is using a customized version of RightNow, my favorite customer service email software, so I held out high hopes that my problem would be quickly solved.

Not exactly.

The guts of my initial complaint were this:

I invite someone, type their email and am prompted for a password. I enter a password and error out.  So then I invite a colleague with the auto-matching function. I click send and error out.

What’s the solution to that question?

Yes, change browsers.

Are you done laughing yet?   I won’t use another browser unless I’m testing a site, but the first part of the canned response LinkedIn.com says reads exactly like this, “At this point, if you are using IE, try to use firefox, if you are using firefox, try to use IE. You can simply download firefox at www.mozilla.com.”

Really?  You expect a Firefox user to fall back to IE to make your site work?  Or you expect someone comfortable in their Microsoft space to try one of those weird and geeky open source things?

I was then told to flush the cache and blow away all the cookies in my new browser.

Wow.

The letter was well-written for the most part, but assumed too much customer engagement. Remember:  your customers don’t know your space like you do, and unless you are providing mission critical services for them, they have no intention of switching anything for you.

How many people get that same message and simply leave the site, muttering, “It just doesn’t work right?”

Now think about your own customer interactions, either one on one, on your site or in your collateral.  Are you looking for too much engagement?  Did you presume that your customer or prospect would go the extra mile to make your product work the way they thought it already should work?  And if so, how many are just silently leaving because there aren’t enough hours in their day?