Poll: Why doesn't Ford communicate with their customers about missed promisses

[bbulkow]

No offense, but I don’t want engineers making high-level decisions. Engineers are good at getting down in the weeds. Which is important. But it also easily leads to getting bogged down and losing sight of priorities. My ex-father in law was an engineer. He’d make three trips to the hardware store to find jusssst the right part to fix a problem when “good enough” was truly good enough.

Engineers also aren’t known for, let’s say common sense solutions. Like I’m sure to an engineer, it makes sense to nest the trunk button under settings. But it’s dumb.

I see, you're qualified to make broad generalizations across the field of all software engineers because your ex-father-in-law was an engineer.

I hope you’re being sarcastic, because this is probably the most irrational and made-up excuse I’ve ever heard anyone make for Ford.

I don’t let in fantasy or fairy tale land, but feel free to keep living in it.

Nobody is expecting to be told a story like that (if it wasn’t just completely made up and pulled out of thin air), a simple email stating “we’re experiencing some issues, we appreciate your patience” and so on would suffice - so why you’re making up stories is beyond me. Some people already feel like Ford is just going to abandon early MYs due to the lack of communication, those people just need basic reassurance.

Don’t you work for a SaaS company?
When has your company ever communicated with customers to that level? Probably never. You can’t sit here and actually think ANYONE was expecting to receive that level of communication from Ford. It sounds like you just made an assumption that’s what I was asking for.

Key to engineering / business communication is understanding the right level of comms and detail, and absolutely some of the companies, sometimes, go to this level of detail. There are absolutely stories that will make your hair stand on end, typically when people die and regulators get involved. Saying that it never happens shows your lack of understanding. You might re consider your opinions.

My point is communication is not the solution. Delivering solutions increases trust and is the solution. A certain amount of 'We are sorry and working on it' would be nice, and Ford could do a little more here imho, but it goes only so far. Details like my imaginary case doesn't make anyone feel better, usually the opposite. Comms is lipstick on a pig, better to do something about the pig.

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[Mirak]

Wow. According to one of my mentors, a big portion of engineering is about compromise. Sometimes the compromise is cost, sometimes it’s weight, sometimes it’s code bloat, sometimes it’s speed. How the compromise happens and its direction are dependent on the project’s priorities. ?‍?

I agree with your point. All I was really trying to say is that engineers aren’t often good “big picture” people and I’m not sure they’re so good at focusing on the things their customers actually care about.

 

[helium89]

I see, you're qualified to make broad generalizations across the field of all software engineers because your ex-father-in-law was an engineer.


Key to engineering / business communication is understanding the right level of comms and detail, and absolutely some of the companies, sometimes, go to this level of detail. There are absolutely stories that will make your hair stand on end, typically when people die and regulators get involved. Saying that it never happens shows your lack of understanding. You might re consider your opinions.

My point is communication is not the solution. Delivering solutions increases trust and is the solution. A certain amount of 'We are sorry and working on it' would be nice, and Ford could do a little more here imho, but it goes only so far. Details like my imaginary case doesn't make anyone feel better, usually the opposite. Comms is lipstick on a pig, better to do something about the pig.

While I would certainly prefer that Ford be better about solving problems (even better would be adequately testing for them before pushing updates, but I’ve pretty much given up on that), there is a minimum level of communication required for any company to keep its customers happy, and Ford falls far short of that level of communication.

Just look at the speedometer change with the 6.8 update. Along with the nonstop posts on here about it, people have been setting up appointments with their dealers because they think something is wrong. A simple email and notification in the app alerting owners that the change is intentional would have avoided a lot of confusion.

Their communication regarding the HVBJB recall has been even worse. There has been radio silence from Ford. Their call center employees seem to be trained to guess rather than admit when they don’t have an answer to questions about it (and most other topics). Their dealerships don’t have a clue what’s going on (but that doesn’t stop them from spreading bad information). FordPass announced that parts were available before the letters went out, which appears to have been a mistake that led to a run on parts. Meanwhile, speculation online has been running rampant. We don’t need all the gritty details, but some basic information and regular updates when there are delays would go a long way towards making it seem like Ford knows what it’s doing.

Ford seems to be betting on the fact that confused and unhappy customers will hurt their PR less than a press release admitting to any sort of mistakes. I’m not sure that’s true in a world where posts from confused/angry customers can go viral. In any case, it indicates a pretty customer-hostile corporate culture.

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