Buffer, one of the industry-leading apps used to schedule and share content on social media, recently had a “bug” that affected 0.00599% of Buffer users (467 out of 7,800,000). A pretty small number if you asked me.
So, what did they do? Well, first off, they fixed the bug and made changes to the login process that made signing-in more secure for all users, not just the 467 who were affected.
That should be the end of the story, but it isn’t.
As a user of Buffer myself, I received an email from Dan Farrelly, CTO of Buffer who explained what happened and to keep his customers “in the loop”. Here is part of his email…
Hi there,
We wanted to proactively reach out to you about a bug in our login system that we identified on Friday and resolved over the weekend.
This bug affected 0.00599% of Buffer users (467 out of 7,800,000), and we have reached out to those 467 people separately.
This issue is fully resolved. Our team has implemented a more secure log-in system which ensures that all account access is private, safe, and secure.
To be especially clear: No passwords were compromised. No credit card details were at risk. This was a technical bug within our system and not a malicious event or hack from an outside party.
We’ve taken precautions to upgrade all Buffer accounts to our new login system.
Lastly, I’d like to send a big thank you to the customer who made us aware of this. We’re always amazed by the community we get to serve.
Dan Farrelly, CTO, Buffer
Mr. Farrelly didn’t have to contact the almost 8 million users of his product. He already reached out to the 467 who were affected, and I imagine explained what happened in greater detail. But he got in touch with all (frankly, I have no way of confirming this but based on me getting this email, I imagine I’m not alone).
What They Did Right
- They were proactive and contacted their customers before the issue was even known to the public.
- They contacted all their customers, not just the few affected.
- The improvements made will benefit their whole customer base
- They gave assurances that no customer information was compromised
And lastly, my favorite…
- They thanked the customer who apparently made Buffer aware of the issue in the first place.
What more could you ask of a business? Not much because only the best companies do this.
Any business that does “what’s in the best interest of their customer” is tops in my book and deserves my business
They address negative issues as they happen, act quickly to resolve them, and inform their customers of what happened, why it happened, and what they did to fix it.
This post’s title says it all; the best companies do this even when they don’t have to. I guess these are a few more reasons to continue being a customer of Buffer. A win-win for everybody I say!
