Inside Facebook has a guest post this morning authored by a Facebook application developer. Phil Edwards, the Director of Business Development at Lonely CEO Media, took the opportunity to remind his peers that they cannot neglect their customers once their applications launch.
As he lays out in his post, too many developers seem to think that once their application launches, they can just sit back and let the checks and adoration roll in, and give no thought to servicing their users. He does an excellent job of explaining how and why developers need to stay on top of user feedback, and address any negative reviews as quickly as possible.
A lot of what he says is plain old common sense; the basics of customer service. And he points out that because Facebook itself is making customer service a greater priority in the latest updates, keeping users happy and satisfied is going to be more important for developers than ever.
The one place I would disagree with him is how he says Facebook's customer service is a wonderful model to follow now - and how they routinely put the customer first. He does say truthfully that the Beacon was a disaster for customer relations, but I would also point him to the recent and very public hoopla over user data left behind when users have tried removing their accounts. It wasn't until users got more vocal and pressured Facebook into total data deletion, that the social network responded.