Imagine you've found an error in a product from some huge international software corporation, let's call it "MacroHard". I bet it has already happened to you a couple of times. Imagine you contact "MacroHard" to let them know about the error. Now think of the chances that this error would actually be fixed in a reasonable amount of time. The probability is close to zero, huh? Also think of the chances that MacroHard will contact you personally when it's fixed...
I'm not even mentioning feature-requests (instead of errors). You must have already guessed - forget about 'em.
Along with the company size, and brand recognition, and other "big" stuff you get when you buy from a massive corporation, you should always ask yourself - "how can I affect the product development or at least the error correction in it?"
Here's an example from earlier this week:
>>>
Wednesday (9:30 AM EST) — Customer:
"Hi there. I've downloaded the latest version of RSS Feed Creator, nice tool. But I need a feature that seems to be missing - or I was just too dumb to find it."
Wednesday (9:35 AM EST) — Alex (Jitbit):
"Hi. Thank you for the email. Can you specify what feature you miss exactly?"
Wednesday (10:30 AM EST) — Customer:
"Hi Alex. Thanks for the quick response. I want to remove the old outdated items from the feed, but the tool doesn't allow removing more than one item at a time."
Wednesday (12:45 PM EST) — Alex (Jitbit):
"Hi. Looked into this and it seems to be an easy task, we're adding this to our next version that will be out within 24 hours, please stay updated to our version-history RSS feed".
Thursday (10:30 AM EST) — Customer:
"Hello. We've downloaded the latest version, all OK. I think we'll be ordering some licenses later on today."
Thursday (02:09 PM EST):
"New Order for 2 licenses of Jitbit RSS Feed Creator"
<<<
Let's see a massive international software corporation do that.
Jun 9, 2009
Why should I buy from a small software company?
2 comments:
After buying your Macro Recorder and having an excellent service dialogue with you all I completely agree.
It is definitely a culture change to be able to submit a bug or ask for an improvement and have progress made on it or even receive a definitive and respectful "no" where the big companies don't even acknowledge requests at all.
So strange in fact that having an additional feature actually coded into the program felt like winning a prize... I told and showed everyone about it. :)
I think you gave an excellent example of the main advantage of small companies - flexibility.
Although releasing micro updates for each feature request every 24 hours is often not an optimal tactics, the main approach is correct.
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