A few months ago I got an enquiry from a prospective customer for a product we re-sell on behalf of another company. The organisation in question had some very rigorous requirements and were very diligent in asking lots detailed questions. Over a number of days they were constantly firing emails to me asking if it did this, if it did that, HOW it did this and HOW it did that etc. As they were based in a Country a long way away (for the sake of illustration, lets just imagine it was Australia), all correspondence was conducted via email. I didn't mind putting the time and effort in answering these questions because there was a decent (not great, but decent) order waiting at the end.
Then suddenly it all went quiet...
I left it for a week or so and then emailed them asking where they were with things and what was happening etc. and got a very vague answer back from them saying other priorities had taken precedence.
Then it all started again. A whole load more questions and ultimately a request to arrange an (urgent and free of charge) evaluation for them, which we duly obliged.
A couple of weeks later I emailed asking how they were getting on with the evaluation, only to be told that they had not got round to installing it yet and would let me know when they had and what their thoughts were.
I forgot about things for a while, only to be reminded about it when we started getting requests from other companies for pricing to quote the said organisation. At that point I decided to contact them again to ask what the hell was going on! I had given them all this help and now, it seemed, they were asking all and sundry to quote. They replied saying it was just their purchasing department having to go through the motions of getting three quotes. At this stage we were not duly worried because we knew what price we were quoting the other companies.
To my discredit, I again forgot about things until this week when I was reminded when I got an email from said contact asking for technical assistance installing and configuring the software. As I later found out, not only had he asked me for help, he had also logged five (yes, five!) support calls with our help desk. I replied asking him if it was the evaluation he was just getting round to installing. He replied saying he was “not sure” (!!) what he had been sent and was therefore installing. He also asked if we could escalate the support calls he had logged from “Low Priority” (as he noticed they were categorised) to “Urgent Priority”.
On closer inspection of the last email he had sent me, it became obvious that he had been sent a full copy of the code by another company, as fulfilment of a purchase order placed with them by the said prospect! They had even referenced the Purchase Order number in the email!
I had no choice but to reply explaining that not only could we not escalate his calls to “Urgent”, but we could not give him any support at all. I further explained that if he wanted any support, he should contact the company he had clearly bought the software from. I told him that if he had actually bought the software from us, we would have given him the high levels of support we had given him when he was making his initial enquiry, as a standard service.
Why am I so annoyed about this?
Well, apart from the fact that I have clearly been made an idiot of, his Purchasing Department never even contacted me to ask us to quote a price! On top of this, the company on whose behalf we re-sell the software knew we were talking to said organisation about the deal, yet they didn't even have the courtesy to let us know someone else had asked them to fulfil the order for them.
Why does any of this matter?
Well, it does for two reasons.
First, within the software industry, most industries I presume, there is something called “The Channel” and most people treat the Channel with integrity. If they don't, it breaks down. In this scenario my trust in this particular channel has broken down and I personally won't be transacting any orders for them again.
Secondly, and this is aimed at potential customers, to make your decisions you clearly DO need to ask lots of questions and find out lots of things. Do remember, though, that if you take the piss out of people by sapping lots of their time without giving any reward, they will either stop giving help or start asking all sorts of horrible questions that you might not like to answer. Things like, When are you going to buy? Who signs the cheques? If I give you this help will you absolutely commit that you will buy from me?
Some people would say I should have asked these questions before I gave my help and that I'm the idiot because I didn't. It's all my own fault!
That's a fair point.
What I'm trying to say though, is that customers don't warm to heavy handed questioning like this at the enquiry stage. All I'm trying to do is warn them that if they don't like it, make sure they are open and honest with suppliers from the beginning.
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| Australian Soldiers allegedly underatking negotiations for a software sale yesterday |
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