I just want to give a disclaimer, while I am upset about the current debacle with Genesis Mining payouts. This is not the main reason why I'm done with the company. Sure it's kind of the catalyst for it, but it's not the straw that breaks the camal back for me.
I think my main gripe with this Genesis Mining debacle is one thing. Customer Service. Now I get it, I really do. I'm a software engineer, and I know it's hard to be a technical person working with complex software and systems, and also trying to keep customers calmed down. I get it. I've worked in the tech industry for 15 years with various roles, and various levels of customer interaction. I've been on the systems and adminstration side and I've been on the application and product side. And while I can pat myself on the back for having great technical skills, I know customers are the reason why we're even in business in the first place. As software engineers and tech professionals in general, we have a tendency to get into the mode of solving problems for the sake of solving problems. At the end of the day, we have to be grounded and understand that we have to have satisfied customers.
I've done software engineering for financial companies before. Customer service is mandatory. Sure I'm not the one answer customer calls, but it's so critical when working for a financial company. People take their money seriously. That's the bottomline. People want transparency when they are leaving it up to you to handle their money. So you have to handle it with kid gloves, and you have to be empathetic.
Genesis Mining has shown it is none of these. The only info we have gotten about the issue is through their twitter feed. They've sparsely talked about the problem, and have even promoted other things before solving the issue at hand. This is so bad, it's not even funny. I mean let's look at this for a second.
You have customers who have invested 10s of thousands of dollars into your platform
You give very ambigous responses with almost no timeline
And then you post things about a ticket give away?
Are you fucking kidding me?
Until the issue is solve, the only thing that Genesis should even talk about on any of their social media outlets is how the issue is being addressed and solve. Talk about what caused the issue, what steps you are taking to resolve it, and futhermore a timeline. Even if you fucked something up, customers will appreciate the honesty and the transparency. Yet we have customers who have had tickets out there for 4 days with no response. We don't have any customer advocate, a community manager, nothing. It feels like the devs and engineers are trying to handle customer relations. This is bad. And it shows that they've basically have decided to put no effort or money into their customer service.
Customers want to feel important. And with genesis mining they feel neglected. I mean this is completely inexcusable.
I don't doubt that Genesis Mining will eventually get their customer payouts. But the way they've been handling their customers by ignoring them is just unforgivable. I've invested several thousands of dollars in this platform, and yeah I understand the risk. That is why I don't cry over spilled milk. But if Genesis is going to try to present themselves as a legit and real company. They most definitely have to be far more transparent. This isn't hard, a simple slack channel, more constant tweets, maybe in a status page are the low hanging fruit here. Later you can think about SMS messages similar to what Bittrex, Bitfinex and Coinbase do. The fact that we have a financial company (because that's what Genesis Mining is, where they like it or not) that doesn't have these essential tools say a lot. Seeing how they respond to a very critical issue has made me very ambivalent about putting any more money into the platform.
In Closing
In closing, I want to be positive not negative. Genesis is not the only game in town, there is Hashing24 and Hashflare on their heels with more features and more timely payouts. Some of them have reinvest options which customers love (yeah this could be scammy, but it's cool nonetheless). So Genesis really need to hire a product team and a customer service specialist. It is crucial to have this in place for a growing company. Filing tickets and hoping a live person gets back with you in a few days is just not going to cut it these days. And I understand a lot of companies built around the cryptospace has traditionally had pretty poor customer service. However this is changing quite a bit, and a lot of big and new money are investing into these platforms. So they're not going to put up with shitty customer service.
I want Genesis to succeed. I've seen their videos and I've seen their people. They seem passionate about what they do. I also loved getting my payouts, and loved investing in it. But they can't succeed with their current customer service. That's going to kill them, and I don't want to see Genesis go away.
