Launch: When the real work begins May 29, 2009
Posted by hardly CRM, Customer Care, Nanovor, mailchimp, zendesk
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As many of you have noted, my posts have been few and far between of late. Just a little busy getting ready for our beta launch.
Two days ago, we launched our beta. Yesterday was the first BIG day of product use. And, despite all the nail biting, things went fairly smoothly. Big sigh of relief. Now, we get to run the rest of the race!
From my end, there have been some remarkable learnings that are germane to most anybody starting a company, getting ready to service customers. In no particular order:
- CRM Tools are very capable, and very inexpensive. I'll be talking a bit more in several coming posts about both MailChimp and Zendesk.
- Getting help, particularly through third-party channels has familiar options, and new, and more flexible choices. I'll talk about a few of these in the coming weeks, and one very special one when the firm in question says it's O.K.
All in all, launches are big fun. You place you bets, you see what happens.
Just like most everything else in life, but with a known deadline.
Time to short Adobe Stock? March 18, 2009
Posted by hardly CRM, Customer Care, outsourcing
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Over the course of my career in the software/internet industry, first Aldus, and then after they were acquired and became Adobe, they offered up great Customer Support.
I personally know some of the leaders responsible for this perception. And, it's no surprise that their support was great and innovative. Their support was completely in step with their brand.
Sunday, I read about how a user experience which indicates that Adobe has outsourced their Support, and based on the description, it sounded like it was offshore (anyone know for sure?).
This is highly interesting in light of my earlier post, Are you Considering Outsourcing of Support.
If recent research is true, we should see further erosion of Adobe stock (note: most stocks have seen a fairly large drop over the last 6 months). But, I don't know exactly when Adobe outsourced their support, so it would be interesting to know when this event happened, and if there are other moves they've made of late.
Let's say this is already priced into their stock. What might be an interesting forward-looking study is whether there is any difference in the rate of improved company value between companies that outsource v. those that don't as our economy flattens, and then starts to improve.
Makes one go hmmm.
Does your startup need an ATS or CRM System? February 27, 2009
Posted by hardly CRM, Systems, ats, hris
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About 10 years ago, I was leading a Customer Care function, and we purchased a number of key infrastructure systems, including phone switches and CRM systems during a period of very rapid growth. These systems were very spendy, and if we every made the decision to buy, it ended up being a major capital purchase decision.
As a result, these decisions were always a serious pain in the butt.
Today, instead of spending $100K or more per year, it's more like $1000 - $5000. And, it can be even lower!
Case in point: Zoho.
Zoho is probably best known for a bunch of hosted on-line apps that are competing against Google apps. They also have two other applications that are usually thought of as big investment items, CRM and HRIS & Applicant Tracking.
Cost?
CRM: $50 per month, flat fee ($600 per year).
HRIS & Applicant Tracking: Sliding scale, starting at free for a company w/10 people including 1 recruiter, and going up to $850 per month for 1000 person organization.
A startup can have an HRIS system with an applicant tracking system for free? You can drop using spreadsheets, or other home-grown systems and go with a real, live full-service system that is designed to do this work.
Wow!
For those small companies that are about their people and their customers, go take a look at these systems!
ps. On the Customer Care front, I'm particularly enamoured of Zendesk @ $19 per agent per month.
Should you (re)consider Outsourcing of Customer Support? February 26, 2009
Posted by hardly CRM, Customer Care, Moneyball, Statistics, outsourcing
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Last year, several Professors put out a paper, Does Offshoring Impact Customer Satisfaction? There were some follow-on periodical articles, including this one, How Offshore Outsourcing Affects Customer Satisfaction.
Here was the amazing thing about the study: For those companies which had outsourced (onshore or offshore) front-office functions, they had seen a decline in their market cap of between 1% - 5% due to a decline in Customer Satisfaction.
YOWZA!
This is one of those studies that just seems to confirm what people tend to think about outsourcing customer care (and other front-office functions), but unfortunately, has been released well after the damage was done to these companies. Again, we see that the ability to measure certain things (costs), and a corresponding inability to measure other impacts (long-term customer value) leads to really dumb "commonly accepted wisdom" decisions (read: Moneyball).
One of the interesting tidbits from the study was that it seemed that most firms who achieved amazing cost reductions through offshore outsourced support simply let the difference flow through to profit - they did not take the results and reinvest in the product to improve its value to the customer.
BTW, back in the day, I tended to use the CEO's mom test when evaluating potential Customer Care solutions. That is, if my CEO's mom would be befuddled in their attempt to get help through any given support channel, I assumed it needed add'l thought or re-engineering.
I wonder if anyone else has seen this and is thinking about insourcing their support? I suppose they would if there was also a study to illustrate they could get the lost market cap back...
