Surface tweet-storm PR nightmare

Richard Wand posted a summary of the PR nightmare for the Microsoft Surface team last week.

This whole thing really was unfortunate because I know the Surface team has gone to great lengths to make sure the user experience with Surface is top-notch. The experience this one company had was basically the result of a few people not thinking things through and then posting on their blog a comical version of their experience. Unfortunately, the comedy part of it is lost when fanboys of various flavors looking to repeat and magnify any criticism of Microsoft.

Fortunately, the Surface Team (and other people with brains) responded to the criticism immediately and made things right. Well, there wasn't much they could do since the problem was mostly those people not knowing what they were doing initially, but they at least made contact with them to discuss their feedback.

This whole event highlights the importance of user experience (particularly when you are positioning yourself as a premium UX) and also about the responsiveness of marketing teams. Bad news can spread in a matter of hours beyond your control, so if you do not participate in the online conversation, you won't know what people are saying about you and won't have a chance to set things right. (Of course, you have no hope of controlling what people say, but at least you can inject your version of things.) The easiest way to prevent this, though, is to have a top-notch UX. I think Surface does have a great experience, not only in software but the device installation teams and developer training. This one company just tripped over itself and fell through the crack.

I wonder that little marketing firm would have written about trying to setup Epson X-Desk?