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I'm a programmer, and I also own WonderProxy (https://wonderproxy.com/ https://wonderproxy.com/) and Yes. I had someone from a rather large company email me, a
by preinheimer 13y ago
I'm a programmer, and I also own WonderProxy (https://wonderproxy.com/ https://wonderproxy.com/) and Yes.
I had someone from a rather large company email me, all super interested, get them started on a trial then they'll pay like tomorrow. They just need to get started ASAP!!!!!!ones!!!! That turned into needing to talk to some business guy, who absolutely needed to talk to me on the phone, so he could ask me for our address and a phone number, which I emailed to him.
I deal with this sort of thing probably once a month. The larger and older a company it is, the more likely I'm going to need to jump through some hoops, rather than have them use our nicely automated purchase process. Filling our vendor forms, agreeing to their anti-bribery policy, giving them a "direct" email rather than support@, agreeing to net-60 rather than net-30 or pre-payment of service.
Is it awesome, no. But I do it. Joel Spolsky's customer service tip #6 (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/customerservice.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/customerservice.html) comes in handy. Pretend you've got a puppet, and you just need to make the puppet say something that will make the customer happy. It's not you, it's the puppet.
Because I've managed enough of these situations, we've built up a sufficient pool of customers that we have enough money to hire (part-time) someone more comfortable dealing with these tricky customers. Now I deal with them less, and more of them sign up. It's a fantastic circle really :).
- preinheimer 13y agoTo continue. I think part of the issue has to do with the importance of the people involved. Chances are someone decided to use our product at a company, and managed to convince a rather important person (RIP) that it was a good idea. But the person who wants to use our product isn't the person we hear from, nor is it the rather important person. It's someone who Reports To The RIP (RTTRIP). RIP didn't spend a lot of time explaining to RTTRIP why they needed us, what we do, or anything, it was probably a brief voicemail or email "go buy some WonderProxy for the programmers, they need it ASAP". So there's RTTRIP, a little bit of information about what their company needs, not a lot of power, and a slew of restrictions on how to make corporate purchases. What's the easiest next step? Give us a call! It's fast, they can explain to the RIP "I called them twice yesterday" if there's any flak for it not being done already, and heck, maybe those folks at WonderProxy can help them figure out what they're supposed to be buying anyways. RTTRIP doesn't expect to be speaking to a RIP at WonderProxy, they expect to be speaking to either a sales person who would love to set up sales calls, conference calls, heck, maybe even send over a brochure and some new pens! or possibly someone else who reports to a rather important person. Instead, over here at WonderProxy _we're the ones_ who screwed everything up. Rather than have a sales person answer the phone, or even someone who reports to someone important... We've got the fraking co-founder answering the phone.
- thesoonerdev 13y agoRIP and RTT? Why am I not surprised that you developed a product called WonderProxy? :-)
- mitchty 13y agoI have a hard time not thinking Routing Information Protocol, and Round Trip Time when I see those TLAs (Three Letter Acronym).