10 May 2014

Findmypast moves to revive reputation

Every manager knows the path to gaining a reputation is slow and to losing it is precipitous. Regaining a reputation takes time too yet managers know it costs less to reenlist a previous member than to win a new one.  We're now seeing findmypast moving to repair the damage caused by recent changes.

The latest company weekly update summarizes what they're doing:

Unfortunately, when we moved our record set forms to new findmypast, some of them gained or lost search fields. We received lots of feedback on this issue, so we’re working through each of our record sets. We’re reviewing the search screens, results fields, order of results and transcriptions and fixing any issues we find. It’s a big job, but we’ve prioritised the sets that are most important to you (births, marriages and deaths records, and census records first) and we’re pushing them live as we go. I hope that you may have already noticed some improvements.
In a previous weekly update company CEO Annelies van den Belt, CEO admitted "some mistakes were made. This resulted in a less than perfect experience, especially for our expert users. I sincerely apologise if we let you down."

When the service is restored, and with addition of new databases, I'd expect social media to reflect the improvements. The company is surely monitoring to judge perception of when that happens, it won't happen quickly. I expect to also see incentives to regain lost customers.

1 comment:

Old Census Scribe said...

Like 25% off charges? I won't hold my breath.