I got that question posed to me today in an entrepreneur interview for UCF. What I proceeded to say was a PG-13 rated response of tourette’s syndrome that most VARs, partners, techies and CIO’s spout about nearly every company they deal with:
“I love their software, but they are such total arrogant dicks that the moment someone comes out with the slightest reasonable replacement I will burn their software, piss on it, then ship it back wrapped in their support contract”
Ok, so that’s the clean version of what I get to hear regarding some of the dominant solutions in our business. Not just related to software but also regarding user group organizations, books, conferences, etc. Aren’t we just a wonderful bunch of people?
My goal as the CEO is to take responsibility for what we do and to do whatever I can to keep a customer when they are pissed. Whether its our fault or their fault, here is nothing worse than disappointing a customer… short of ignoring their requests, being deceitful about what is actually going on, and dispatching their call to India.
I handle the disputes directly, by myself. We’ve made a significant effort to make sure the problems get to me and that the problems are wide open for everyone to see, to the point of running a transparent NOC, transparent feedback system, DID that rings right on my desk. Being that open and up front about things has a lot of vulnerabilities too, which sort of serves as a motivating stick for the rest of the company to either minimize the apparent problems or document them openly so everyone is aware of what is wrong.
It tends to work. Thankfully, we don’t have many issues so I can handle the problems by myself. It does not do much towards keeping the clients though – if they are pissed, they are leaving to go to another place where they think they will get better service. However, we do get a chance to part ways on good terms and leave the door open for other solutions or down the road.
I take immense pride in what we do over at Own Web Now and the one thing I hope we can accomplish is for all of our clients to actually like doing business with us.
P.S. So what makes a client pissed? Bull and lies. IT people tend to be a pretty reasonable and understanding bunch – after all, they deal with computers that disappoint on daily basis. So they have a bit of a tolerance for failure. What they don’t have a tolerance for is being ignored, being made unimportant, not having anything to say in public, being closed in opinion and in product input.
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