This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Ruby Buzz by Obie Fernandez. Original Post: The Right Way to Handle a Screwup Feed Title: Obie On Rails (Has It Been 9 Years Already?) Feed URL: http://jroller.com/obie/feed/entries/rss Feed Description: Obie Fernandez talks about life as a technologist, mostly as ramblings about software development and consulting. Nowadays it's pretty much all about Ruby and Ruby on Rails. Latest Ruby Buzz Posts Latest Ruby Buzz Posts by Obie Fernandez Latest Posts From Obie On Rails (Has It Been 9 Years Already?)

There are right ways to handle a screw-up, and there are wrong ways. Joost, a really cool net TV service from the people that gave the world Skype, gives us an example of the right way to handle a screw-up, and how to build trust with your user base as a side-benefit.

Let me dissect the email I got from Joost today, as one of their beta testers:

Apologies to all - but we've got a new Joost version 0.9.2 ready for you - as your old 0.9.1 is no longer working (with a very unfriendly error message as well).

You can login and download the new 0.9.2 here: http://www.joost.com/download

Our apologies for this - but this is all part of being a beta.

Notice, two apologies, as well as an acknowledgment about that "very unfriendly error message". Also, a link to the solution right up front. Next, the email offered a frank explanation of what went wrong.

As you may know - we use SSL technology to protect your privacy. Once every other year or so these certificates need to be renewed. That moment came, for the first time in our existence, yesterday. Unfortunately we did not realize that we had a copy hardwired into the 0.9.1 client by accident.

Whoooops! You don't want to hardwire things that expire (such as certificates) into a software product. Joost does the right thing by explaining the mistake. Bonus points for couching the explanation in terms of protecting user's privacy.

Finally, have some good news to share whenever you give bad news:

We've also taken the opportunity to upgrade all our Long Term Storage machines; they are more than 4 times as efficient now. So if you have experienced any stuttering in the past - do try again and tell us if our fixes have worked.

Excellent!