Communications of the ACM

practice

DO YOU HAVE disdain for your customers? Do you wish they would go away? When you interact with customers are you silently fantasizing about them switching to your competitor’s product? In short, do you hate your customers?

Maybe you should try using your company’s external APIs to show your disdain. What? How could you do that?

In this article, I document a number of industry best practices designed to show customers how much you hate them. All of them are easy to implement. Heck, your company may be doing many of them already.

Why would you want to use your company’s API to show your hate? I think the answer is quite simple: Customers are jerks.

Darn customers! Always using our services!

Bothering our salespeople for quotes!
Creating more work for the accounts
receivable department by sending us
money. Needing customer support for
stupid reasons such as: “The documen-
tation is wrong,” or “This feature is bro-
ken,” or “Your product killed my cat.”
Older readers may long for the good
old days when companies that were ac-
tual monopolies would pretend to love
their customers. Now we all work for
companies that don’t admit to being
monopolies and actually hate their cus-
tomers. Boy, how times have changed.

Technique #1: Don’t Have an API Not having an API is a good start. It also requires the least effort of all the techniques. All you have to do is think about adding an API, then not do it.

What good is an API, anyway? Primarily it allows customers to implement features that you didn’t think of. “Look, buddy, if we didn’t think of the feature, it couldn’t possibly be very good. We hire the best and brightest to think of new features all day long and not implement them. Don’t horn in on their turf.”

APIs also permit customers to use a lot more of your product. If they have to click, click, click to use your product, they are going to use it only a little. If an API exists, they can automate their use of your product, which would let them use it a lot more. They could automate provisioning for their entire company. They could build entire new applications based on your API. Just think how much more of your product they would be able to consume with an API.

How totally rude! If they use your product more, you will have to buy more servers, spend more time cashing their checks, and, heaven forbid, maybe start hosting conferences where people use terms such as leverage, hackathons, and chalk talks. Conferences? Ick.

Technique #2: Make Signups Difficult OK, you have lost the battle and your company wants to build an API anyway. At least you can press the brakes a bit