Quality of Service
The quality of service you provide to your customers is an important part of how they preceive you and your products.
Here are two real stories. You be the judge:
"How Can You Expect It To Work?"
A couple of months ago, I bought a little software utility. I installed it on my PC from my admin account and then logged in as a normal user. When I activated the software it was obvious that something is wrong. It kept asking me for my license key, but didn’t seem to remember it after I’ve provided it. I tried this also from the admin account, but this did not seem to have any affect on other accounts on that machine.
Like any good customer, I’ve sent a mail to customer service. The response I got was that I must be logged on as administrator in order to use the software. This, of course, was unacceptable, so I’ve kindly explained the company’s representative that I cannot be expected to compromise the security of my working environment. It was not long until I’ve got a response blaming me for not being a smart user: "how can you expect our software to write its settings to the Windows Registry without administrator privileges?".
Needless to say I was amazed. First of all, of course you can. But that is not the point. The average user of this software wouldn’t have known what the Registry is in the first place. He might have asked for instructions on how to fix the problem, and expose his machine to unnecessary risks as a result. All this would have happened just because who ever wrote this software didn’t thought of his customers and their interests. This was so built-in to the atmosphere of that particular company, that I, as a customer, was immediately labeled as "not smart enough" to use their software, because of my perfectly sensible requirements.
"What Can We Do For You?"
On a completely different note, consider the hosting service I use: DotEasy.com. I’ve recently upgraded the hosting plan I use for hosting our sites. Since the new hosting plan provided numerous new features and capabilities, I had many questions and special requests. For more than two weeks of "nagging" tech support with my special needs, I was served with a smile and was offered with the best help there is. It didn’t matter whether I did something wrong, or whether I needed some special setup. I really got the sense that I was an important customer (although I am one out of more than 120,000).
The Bottom Line
When you have a quality product, you enjoy providing service and support to your customers. When you have a problematic product, you get frustrated, so all you can do is blame your customers for the problem they experience.
Quality should be built into the product. No tech support in the world can make a poor product into something useful that serves the people who paid good money for it.
