In the spirit of using those ghastly experiences one has with various companies and organisations as lessons learned, here are this weeks lessons:
1. Going Green – keep using online, web based systems for invoicing, customer retention, information. We fill up our green bin a lot faster than we should because so many companies insist on sending out paper. Someone ought to do a case study on Sage, for example. We left NovaUCD more than 18 months ago. We have rung, written, rung, written, emailed, rung and written to Sage to say stop sending us information to our NovaUCD address. These guys sell a customer relationship management system and they can’t manage a simple change of address.
2. Support & Maintenance Contracts should be for support & maintenance and your customer ought to request it. Do not send out an invoice to a customer who has
a) told you that they no longer use your product
b) been quite vocal about it on public forums
c) even spoken with your product manager to tell them why you no longer use their product
Don’t then send a credit note against that invoice and a letter telling them about upgrading their licence through the support contract that you have just issued a credit note against the invoice for… yes, I stopped following this too.
How did they know that I had stopped using their product? Well after the last invoice, I rang them up to tell them that. So they issued a credit note. In that phone call I told them for the 18th time (yes, once a month) that we had moved offices.
Please please please stop sending me this time wasting, environment killing heap of spam. I moved payroll software to Payback.ie because they are upfront about their charges, it’s all online, their support is brilliant, they understand small businesses and provide excellent solutions for us. I moved bookeeping to SortMyBooks.ie because it was a hell of a lot more flexible and user friendly than Sage products and they’re an Irish company and their support is brilliant. I moved invoicing to Freshbooks.com because it’s online, flexible, their support is incredible and it does what it says on the tin.
Sage just doesn’t get it.
