Day 75: What Could Nextdoor Have Accomplished in 75 Days?
Today is Day 75.
Instead of writing another post about unanswered emails, detailed data, panels, communication strategies, or who did—or didn't—respond, I started wondering:
What can actually happen in 75 days?
Quite a lot.
A company can launch a product.
A marketing team can build and execute a campaign.
A business can hire and onboard employees.
A research team can conduct a study, analyze the results, write a report, and publish the findings.
A CEO can appear on multiple podcasts.
Nextdoor can publish new Insights reports, announce initiatives, change how small businesses interact with the platform, promote advertisers, celebrate emergency managers, and launch a Good Neighbor recognition program.
While one simple request remains unresolved.
Let's Measure This Differently
Forget days for a moment.
75 days = 1,800 hours.
That's approximately 108,000 minutes.
My original request probably requires one of three responses:
1. Here's the detailed data.
2. The detailed data isn't available to you.
3. Here's who you need to contact to obtain it.
That's it.
At this point, I'm almost impressed.
We've taken something that potentially required a two-minute email and turned it into a 75-day communications case study.
As someone with more than 20 years in Learning & Development, I've taught and designed training around efficiency, customer experience, communication, process improvement, and identifying performance gaps.
If this were presented as a training scenario, I'd probably ask learners:
“What could the organization have done differently?”
I have a feeling that discussion would be lively.
The Opportunity Cost Is More Interesting
Here's the part organizations sometimes miss.
Every unnecessary customer interaction has a cost.
Someone reads the email.
Someone forwards it.
Someone discusses it.
Someone decides whether to respond.
Communications becomes involved.
Leadership gets copied.
More emails arrive.
More public posts appear.
And suddenly the cost of not resolving something becomes greater than the cost of resolving it.
That's the fascinating part of Day 75.
Nextdoor didn't just spend 75 days not providing the detailed data.
It turned a two-minute question into a 75-day story.
And I'm still writing it.
So Let's Try Something New
I'm giving Nextdoor a hypothetical challenge:
You have two minutes.
No committee.
No communications strategy meeting.
No executive approval process.
No corporate language.
Just answer:
Is the “detailed data” referenced in your blog available to me?
Yes?
Send it.
No?
Tell me.
Restricted to advertisers?
Tell me.
That's communication.
And then we can finally retire the counter.
Because I'd much rather write:
Day 75: NEXTDOOR SENT THE DATA
That's a post I'd genuinely enjoy publishing.
Until then...
1,800 hours and counting.
This is the condensed version. My complete thoughts and continuing Nextdoor study are at NielFlamm.com/blog.
And subscribe at NielFlamm.com because apparently we're finding out together how high this counter can go.
When the Process Fails, Don’t Forget There Are People on the Plane
I came across this Facebook Reel, and I genuinely feel for this parent trying to do the best she can for her family:
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1GUxjuMGvT/
Watching it reminded me of something that companies sometimes forget when operations go sideways: a process failure is rarely just a process failure to the customer.
I’ve been in the situation where my flight has been canceled. It’s no fun.
You’re standing in an airport trying to figure out what happens next. Where am I sleeping? When am I getting home? What happens to my luggage? What about the hotel, rental car, work, kids, medications, connections, or whatever else was waiting for me at the other end?
Now imagine trying to manage all of that while also taking care of your family.
That’s where I think JetBlue missed something important.
Airlines have incredibly complicated operations. Weather happens. Mechanical problems happen. Crews time out. Aircraft end up in the wrong cities. Sometimes a flight cannot operate.
I understand that.
But the operational problem and the customer experience are two different things.
JetBlue may transport cargo in the belly of an aircraft, but the people sitting above it aren't cargo.
They have feelings.
They have emotions.
They have families.
They have somewhere they were expecting to be.
And when the process fails, that is when customer experience matters the most.
A great customer experience isn't demonstrated when everything works perfectly. That's the easy part.
It's demonstrated when something goes completely wrong, and the company says:
“We know this disrupted your life. Let us help you figure out what happens next.”
Policies are necessary. Procedures are necessary. Systems are necessary.
But there has to be enough flexibility—or enough humanity built into those systems—to recognize when somebody needs more than a scripted answer.
Because the passenger standing at the counter isn't thinking about aircraft utilization, crew scheduling, or operational efficiency.
They're thinking:
“How am I going to get my family home?”
Sometimes fixing the customer experience doesn't mean fixing the airplane.
It means remembering the people who were supposed to be sitting inside it.
For more of my thoughts on customer experience, the good, the bad, and sometimes the completely ridiculous, follow along on my blog:
https://NielFlamm.com/blog