Managing Contacts - AND Unhappy Customers!

I’m a long time user of ACT! software, a contact management program that is a great resource for salespeople and entrepreneurs.  Unfortunately, over the last few years, the company that owns it began focusing on large, networked groups of users at corporations.  As they re-developed the software, it lost some of the functionality that made it so valuable to users like me.  

I began looking at alternatives for the teleproduction studio that I run and came across Avidian and their software, Prophet.  (See www.avidian.com.)  We purchased the software in December or January for use by our account manager and me.  Because of my resistance to new software and my fifteen years of ease with ACT!, I dragged my feet on installing it and we didn’t get into using it until last month.  

Of course, as is typical with new software, we ran into hiccups.  Moving the specific contact data we wanted to use from one database to another didn’t go smoothly.  Figuring out how to send one copy of a bulk email to each contact, instead of three copies, was a puzzle.  And getting in touch with tech support was challenging.

We tried emailing and responses would take a few days.  We tried calling and were told it was a training matter and that the Avidian training department was “in training” so we’d have to schedule our session at 5:30pm.  It was very frustrating.  

Fortunately, my years of sales have taught me that when you want something resolved, a great last resort is to call the sales department and ask them to help you figure it out.  So, I called Avidian and asked for a sales rep.  I believe his name was Tom and he was great.  ”I’m so sorry you had to deal with that,” he said. “Would you mind sharing your frustration with our president?  He needs to know about this.  I’ll put you through to his extension.”  

As the call rang through, my first thought was “now this guy knows how to move a customer up the ladder to get what they need!”  My guess was that, like most companies, Avidian may have some tension between those that sell the product and those that support it.  And my concern was that the president would be far too busy to deal with a tiny little customer like me and I would be back to square one.  I left my message anyway and went on with my day.  

A few hours later, I had a message from James Wong, Avidian’s CEO.  I rang him back and was pleasantly surprised by his concern.  He listened to my rant about how difficult it had been to get our problem solved. He allowed me to vent my frustration.  And he gave me some really straight information about how their tech support works.  As we talked, we realized that his tech support team had neglected to give me a key piece of information.  In assuming that we wouldn’t want to pay for tech support to resolve an issue with using an Excel database to import information, they had sent us back to training, where our question would most likely eventually be answered.  (In reality, I would have happily paid for the 10-minute technical resolution to avoid the time spent in training.) 

James and I talked for a bit about the rigors of maintaining strong customer service and the challenges of providing good tech support to even your smallest customers.  Before we hung up, he promised to have someone in tech support call us to work out our issue.  By the end of the day, our problem was resolved and we’ve been happily using Prophet software to manage our contacts ever since.  (I’ve even figured out how to send only one marketing email to each customer!)

It was a great resolution to our problem and I’m now a happy Prophet advocate.  I’m sure that James passed the information from our telephone call to his training and tech support staff.  His willingness to “get in the trenches” and hear directly from an unhappy customer is inspiring.  It was a great example of how simply talking to customers, hearing their concerns and addressing them can turn an angry customer into a lifelong fan.  

REFLECTIONS:  Do you look at angry customers as problems or challenges?  What can you do to create a mindset that allows you to look forward to solving a customer’s problem?  Do you know when to pass a customer’s problem “up the ladder” to a manager?