Staff Writer Derek Jensen penned an interesting item for this morning’s The Salt Lake Tribune. In an article titled “SL County launches ‘Up Grade’”, Jensen reports on Up Grade” — Salt Lake County, Utah’s, new online resource for business owners and entrepreneurs, inspired by Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon. From today’s online edition of the Tribune

On Thursday, Corroon unveiled a new business-development program described as a “one-stop shopping” resource for small businesses. Called “Up Grade,” Corroon’s brainchild consists of a new Web site that pools federal, state, county and private resources for prospective - or existing - businesses to navigate. “The resources? A lot of them exist,” explained Dale Carpenter, Corroon’s director of business and economic development. “We’re in no way reinventing the wheel. But we want it to be a one-stop center.” The Web site designates business categories under “start up,” “grow up,” “move up,” and “fire up.”

Great. I cannot wait to visit the site.

Oh, wait, hold on… I can’t, because Jensen and the editorial department over at the Tribune newsroom failed to include the web site address anywhere in the article! At the bottom of the page, the Tribune’s own web site address appears, but nowhere in the article itself is Up Grade’s URL ever provided. You would think—wouldn’t you—that a newspaper would be savvy enough to include the web site address of a site they devote nearly 400-words to, but in case you haven’t noticed, publishers do this sort of thing all the time. If I had a dollar for every newspaper, magazine, or newsletter article that contained language like—So-and-so’s web site is a great resource for X, Y, and Z–without specifically referencing the web site address itself, I’d have enough money to pay the annual street value of the hosting fees for my blog two times over.

And it’s not just newspapers and magazines that fail to provide critical and relevant information. Salt Lake County’s own web site does a really poor job of calling attention to the Up Grade web site. One would think that the County would list the site under “Resources” or right in the center of the page under Today in Salt Lake County, but they do not. Instead, they placed a banner ad at the bottom of the left-hand column, a spot that usability experts tell us is the second or third last spot our eyes gravitate towards on any given web page.

In any event, despite the Tribune’s failure to provide the URL, and the County’s weak promotion of the site, Up Grade appears to be a great resource for business owners and entrepreneurs throughout the state of Utah, which is where my company, Doba, is headquartered.

Despite the fact that my company has over 35,000 very satisfied paying customers, every once in a while we do fail to meet someone’s expectations… and when that happens, boy oh boy, you’d better duck and take cover! Have a look at the following excerpts of headlines about my company, which were found on two different Internet-based message boards (FYI: each has been edited for punctuation and clarity):

- Beware, this company is terrible!!!!!!
- Avoid this scam at all costs!!
- Doba’s a rip-off… they are lame middlemen
- Doba is a scam… biggest fraudster ever
- Doba is cheating all of you out of your profits!

Sentiments like these—especially when posted in unmoderated online forums—are inevitable. You can be the nation’s leading fashion retailer (think Nordstrom). You can have a platinum reputation for customer service (think LL Bean). You can be a mom and pop operation with five employees and twenty regular customers. Whoever you are, regardless of the quality of your product or service, and no matter how attentive you are to the needs and desires of your customers, there’s no way that you’re ever going to satisfy everyone 100 percent of the time, and you’d better be prepared to have that fact made public.

Because everyone at Doba takes a great deal of pride in how we treat our customers, fellow employees, and community members, consumer-generated headlines like these–as well as the detailed comments that tend to follow–are very hard to read. On the one hand, as a company co-founder and CEO, I want to reach out to the people who feel that way and offer to bring them up to speed on who we are, what we do, and why our value proposition/business model is sound. And then on the other hand, sometimes I just want to grab those same people and holler, “What in the heck are you talking about, and why are you trying to hurt our reputation?�?

The day before yesterday, someone left a comment here on my blog about those very same Doba-related message board comments. He shared that while he was indeed interested in using Doba’s services, he first wanted my take on the message board comments. I told him that while I could certainly go through each message and respond, I thought it’d be better if I took the high road and simply acknowledge that everyone’s entitled to his or her own opinion. I also told him that it’s important to recognize that the Internet provides a dynamic forum for the sharing of both good and bad information, and I encouraged him to contact our Customer Service/Support Department for more information related to his concerns. What I didn’t tell him was this…

The people I work with to make ours the best company on the planet are a part of my family, and when someone attacks one of my family members without justification or cause, well, it just pisses me off! Each and every day I step foot into our offices, I witness first-hand smart and caring people authentically pouring their hearts and souls into a company that helps entrepreneurs and small businesses find products to resell by connecting them to wholesale suppliers. So, when someone publicly states that we’re scammers and cheaters, I do tend to take it personally.

Luckily though, at the end of the day, I always come around to the realization that it’s not personal; it’s just business. I recognize that people run businesses and that people aren’t perfect. I’m also reasonable enough to recognize that some people can never be satisfied, and as a result, they will almost always have a negative disposition towards one company or another, including my own.