When you near the planned release date for a product, it isn’t uncommon to find yourself with features that work great and are very cool, but that you just don’t have time to fully implement. When this happens, getting the product out takes priority over adding this one last feature. This is precisely what happened with a “lost feature” that I’m going to tell you about today!
So read on to learn about one of the Lost Features of eWallet (and even try it out in your own copy of the software!)
We want to wish a very happy third birthday to Clinton Fitch (Dot) Com. Many of you may already be familiar with Clinton’s site, and for those of you who aren’t, you should definitely check it out! It’s full of mobile news and reviews of some of the coolest hardware and software out right now. And today is a good time to visit the site, because Clinton is celebrating with a contest, and you don’t want to miss out!
Congratulations, Clinton, and we wish you many more years of news and reviews to come!
There were some great discussions last month about technical support and customer service, and now it’s time to see whose comment was the chosen one for July!
This month the lucky blog contest winner is Bill Griffin, who commented on the post Support and Sunrocket Alternatives. Congratulations! I just sent you an email explaining how to get your prize. If you don’t receive it, reply to this post and let me know.
To everyone else, thanks so much for all the great comments, and be sure to keep ’em coming, because next time it could be your chance to win!
I just finished reading (OK, skimming) an interesting book called Founders at Work, interviews with founders of famous technology companies about what happened in their earliest days. It turns out that a few of them were involved with handhelds – PayPal started out as a service by which Palm users could beam each other IOUs (do people even beam using Palms anymore? I haven’t seen anyone do that in years). Another of the founders interviewed was involved with General Magic and the long-forgotten Magic Cap handheld, which we looked at for about 2 minutes in the very early days of Ilium Software.
Another former handheld company founder who’s moved on is my friend Vidal Graupera, founder of Iambic. I first met Vidal many years ago. I don’t remember where, but I very clearly remember our conversation about what a bad idea it is to start company name with an “i“.
Anyway, Vidal has moved on, and has started a site called 5th Bar, full of useful info about, and reviews of, mobile phones and accessories, and cell phone carriers. I find roundups like this very useful – I’ve spent a lot of time lately on the VOIP reviews and roundups (see my previous post for why, and my conclusion). But I’m hoping it pays off in decent service. And I’m definitely bookmarking 5th Bar, because I’m sure that my current mobile phone won’t be my last.
Like everyone else who used Sunrocket as their VIOP provider, I’m now looking for a replacement service, as they’ve just announced that they’ve stopped their service. And because I went to Sunrocket in the first place because Vonage customer service was so bad, I’m spending a lot of time reading reviews of other VOIP providers.
I like the convenience of having phones all around my house – it’s a small house and I have 6 phones, and still have a hard time finding one when it rings – so going cell-only, while an option, isn’t my first choice. And I briefly worked for our local phone company once, and will do almost anything to never give them any money again. So finding a VIOP provider I don’t mind (I don’t even have to like them, just not find them too objectionable) would be the best option for me.
But reading the comments on the review boards – wow. I may go cell-only just because I don’t want to give money every month to a company that doesn’t treat me decently. It’s why I canceled Vonage in the first place, and is the sole reason I’m not going back to them. I don’t need all that many features (though will admit I enjoy number blocking quite a bit, and would like a less-expensive plan with limited minutes, since I never use many) but I will not knowingly sign up with a company that doesn’t tell me the truth, or whose representatives don’t have the knowledge or authority to fix my problem or even to connect me with someone who does. I just won’t – I don’t want to support that kind of business model if I absolutely don’t have to. I don’t fly Northwest (if I can possibly avoid it) for the same reason – I just don’t want to give money to people who treat me that badly.
So this decision really comes down to support, for me, since I do have the luxury of not getting VOIP or a landline at all, and of taking my time to make up my mind. There are several providers who have the features I want and a decent price, and I’m very willing to put up with the VOIP phoneline quality. But unless I find one where I get more confidence in their support – even though I doubt I’ll need it – I don’t think I’ll be signing up with any of them. (And Sunrocket’s suggestion – Teleblend – is just scary. I’ve never heard of them before; they’re not on any of the review sites; at least 2 of their URLs were registered this week, and there’s very little info about their agreement on their site – just “sign up”. How about “no thank you”!)
Support does matter. And if we buy, or sign up for, the least expensive alternatives based only on price, we’re just incenting companies to provide bad support. And making it harder for people who provide good support to survive.
I’m in process of switching away from a program I’ve liked for many years. I’ve been thinking about it for a while, but a bad support experience was what pushed me off the fence. The support people weren’t rude, or even hard to reach; they just didn’t know the answer to my question, said they’d find out and get back to me, and never did.
More and more, I’m basing my buying decisions on support. I dropped Vonage for VOIP because their support was clearly outsourced and had no idea what they were doing. I don’t mind outsourced, but I do mind not giving support people enough information to answer questions, or enough authority to solve problems. I’ll never buy anything from Dell again for the same reason. Their PCs are fine, their prices can’t be beat, but their customer service people can’t fix a problem, and can’t even escalate it to someone who can.
For software – I have to be able to get support. I depend way too much on software working to put up with no reply to my email messages, no followup on problems, or no way to know my message has even been received. My work, my personal info, my conversations: I depend on software, and on the safety net of knowing I can get help if I need it. I won’t buy a bad product with good support, but there’s a lot of good software in the world. I won’t – and don’t have to – settle for anything but good support.
We do phone support here – tollfree in the U.S. – and while it’s one of our biggest expenses, there’s no way we’ll drop it. Yes, it takes more time to talk to someone on the phone than to email them, but when someone needs help, we want to provide it, whatever it takes. And email is not always the best way to communicate, or even always a reliable way. No matter how good our email sending is, if someone can’t receive it, the communication doesn’t happen.
I’m proud of a number of things we’ve accomplished in the last 10 years, and high on the list is the killer support we provide. I’ve heard some of the conversations, and I’m always impressed. If every company – software or otherwise – had as good support as we do, things would be a lot easier for everyone. And I think that many, many people – the people who actually use, need and call the support lines – would be a lot less stressed and angry so much of the time.
