It Pays to Bare All

September 23rd, 2008 Chris Posted in Customer Support, Technology | 2 Comments »

I had a frustrating week on the technology front. We use a product that automates many of our marketing activities. For example, it automatically sends out a series of sales tips to customers and at the end offers them a membership in a on-going sales coaching program.

For the last couple of weeks, we couldn’t figure out why no one was opting to join the coaching program. After all, it’s a tremedous value that delivers a host of resources to make an immediate and lasting impact to your sales. Just click here to… Sorry – I got carried away…

We were confronted with the ugly prospect that we are marketing losers, unable to do a basic upsell. Faced with this, I took the next logical step: find someone else to blame. Luckily I did!

As it turns out, our marketing software had broken. They had released a new version and done a crappy job of testing. So for two weeks, when our prospects finished their run of sales tips, they were not getting their upsell pitch. They weren’t getting as much as a Thank you and come again…

So I called my friends at Infusion (the software company) and asked Wat Up?!?!?  The response: Yeah, we know about that. I was dumb-founded. I was losing money and they didn’t let me know? The excuse: We weren’t sure how many users were impacted.

I can forgive software bugs. I have been around the industry long enough to know that s**t happens. What I can’t forgive is not being notified. If I had been notified I could have done manual follow. I would have been grumpy but I would still have business continuity.

When companies hold back this information, it is because they are being huge wimps. They don’t want to get beat up and deal with complaints. It’s tough – I’ve been there. I’ve been physically threatened by customers not happy with the fact there is a bug and the resolution time frame. But that is life in software. Deal with it.

You want to make customers really mad – hide the truth from them. Then when they find out (they always do) and realize the damage done, it is medieval time.

Here was my response to Infusion:

…You have to remember that most of us rely on this for our livelihood. I can tell you first hand when there is a bug in Infusion where a marketing campaign doesn’t run or a credit card doesn’t get processed, my pay goes down. Nothing ignites passions like one’s wallet.

And to be frank, most business-to-business software companies do a far better job at transparency with known issues. I cannot count the number of times that I’ve called Infusion support with an critical issue and been told that, “oh yeah – we know about that.” Yet at the same time on this forum, there is no mention of the bug under “known issues.”

Top this up with the frustration of a new application that has broken many, many things. While I question the prioritization of a new interface versus stability and features, regardless the new app appears to have been released prematurely.

What I expect from Infusion is a table, updated daily, with the following:

1. A list of every open Pri 1 and 2 issue. No filtering just because the number of users impacted isn’t known.
   
2. A statement about who is impacted by situation. For example: “users who perform this type of operation…”
   
3. Any known workaround. Even if all that can be done is check that one has the problem and do some painfully manual workaround.

I have been around the software business for a long time. Let me assure you, you will lose more customers by hiding serious issues than by coming clean.

Chris Voice

How about you? Are you honest with your customers? Even when you look bad?

C.