Piracy: A solution to stupid customer service
A big lesson from popular (geeky) understanding of the internet is that you can route around problems. This was one of the “wow” things about the net in the early days it was robust and flexible.
Perhaps that has permeated into our digital culture as this online chat screengrab demonstrates. A potential customer wants software but is worried about localisation issues penalising them. The customer service rep doesn’t have enough information (or power) to answer the query so the solution is to pirate the software.
I can accept that unauthorised duplication is a problem for development companies but if your product delivery is so stupid and an alternative means of getting the software exists (and it almost always does) then creating friction in the legitimate purchase route is very dumb indeed.
This should be a conversion funnel with very few dropouts. If a conversation starts with, “I want to buy your product,” and ending other than a sale points to some big problems with a company.
