Recently I used Fog Creek’s Copilot software to attempt to help a family member import some favorites into Firefox. I followed the original Project Aardvark team two summers ago and knew what Copilot was in broad strokes.
So I ran the two minute trial and things seemed to work as expected. I bought a day pass ($5) and proceeded to connect up to accomplish the task. After about thirty seconds of being connected, though, the remote screen froze for me and I was unable to do anything on the remote computer. On the other side the computer was put into a tailspin of resource consumption, bringing the box to its knees. Eventually a reboot was required.
I tried this again about ten hours later to make sure it wasn’t related to network issues and the same exact symptoms persisted. At this point I just resorted to the old talking on the phone and guessing what the screen looks like to get through the process remotely. We accomplished the task, but it definitely took much longer than it would have with Copilot.
Needless to say I was somewhat disappointed, but knowing Fog Creek’s reputation and what it’s like to write software, I submitted a description of my experience to Fog Creek support and politely asked for a refund. Not only did I get a refund immediately, but (presumably) the developer who responded to my submission owned the issue outright. Instead of making excuses or using any one of other common techniques for deflection, he apologized profusely for my unfortunate experience, informed me that it was indeed a known bug, that they are working on it now and that they will inform me when the bug is fixed.
I couldn’t have asked for a better resolution to the problem I had. It really does make a huge difference when a company completely owns a problem and takes responsibility not only for a customer’s poor experience but for fixing the issue going forward. There is no question in my mind that I will use Copilot and other Fog Creek products again because I know that the people behind them care deeply about quality and the value that they provide to real people.