Hamstrung
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The upside to letting a customer down
Several months ago, we let a customer down. They were in another state relying on prototype sensors we had built by hand. As a hardware startup, I think the technical term for when-you-can-no-longer-remotely-communicate-with-your-sensors is, “hamstrung.”
Darren Buckner used to work for NFL.com but when you encounter him, he looks more like he plays for the league. He is soft-spoken and earnest. When he and I get on the phone early in the day, he asks me, “Did you win the morning, Andrew?” Meaning, did I take time to read, eat well, and exercise?
His cofounder, Jewel, is on a regular tie rotation. In fact, I believe she can tie a tie in 50 different variations. She carries an easy laugh and relies on brutal honesty. When you have Jewel’s attention, it’s hard to lose it.
These are the two lovely people that I let down… a linebacker and someone who can deftly tie a noose.
Jewel and Darren are the founders of Workfrom, an oasis for remote workers in 20 cities. Their product is aptly named, too. The website aggregates great places to do work from: cafes, bars, restaurants, lobbies, public spaces, etc.
In order to serve their burgeoning community of mobile, remote workers and travelers, Workfrom monitors popular locations’ WiFi speeds, their number of working outlets, and types of seating. If you haven’t used their product, I suspect you will soon. They’re growing quickly and their users love them.
Missing Ingredients
Density is a people counter. We attach our sensor to a doorframe and measure how busy a popular place is. Density is real-time, accurate, anonymous, and cheap.
Workfrom and Density were a natural fit for one another.
If you’re trying to get work done, knowing the available seating of the place you’d like to work [before you go and from your phone] is really helpful. So Workfrom became a Density customer.
We installed our sensors in a set of popular Portland locations and they integrated our data.
Workfrom is based in Oregon; Density is a San Francisco startup. A while back, just weeks after flying up and installing our sensors, six locations went down. Simultaneously.
Sensors are different than software. When a deployed sensor goes down and we can’t communicate with it, we have to physically troubleshoot. Darren and Jewel, being the gems they are, visited each location, broke open the units, and manually helped us debug. At least a week of otherwise productive days for them were spent digging through our prototype hardware.
The defect was a series of bricked hard drives. As soon as the team at Density identified the issue, we found a fix, loaded up on replacement parts, and flew me to Portland the next day.
Done is better than perfect but with hardware companies, a flawed, done product is a little more challenging to fix. As such, customer service looks a bit like this:
- 500 dollars in unplanned expenses
- 250 miles traveling
- 48 hours of site visits
- 3 days of prototype downtime
- 2 all-nighters
- And the shared sinking feeling that comes with disappointing someone you care about…
Once fixed, the team was spent but as our hardware came back online, we realized circumstance had forced us to review and improve our systems, to step up the rigor of our testing, and to learn how to respond to crisis as a team.
More than anything, in the patient duo that founded Workfrom, we had earned a friend.
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Darren Buckner’s version of the story
For more on Workfrom — https://workfrom.co/
Density — http://density.io
