I live and die by screen sharing and today I died by it. After upgrading my desktop mac to Yosemite with no issues on Saturday I decided to break my own rule and bring the laptop along as well. I didn’t have any really good reason, I just was sitting around and decided to do it. Bad idea!
Monday rolled around and I headed into my first virtual meeting – a working session for our Salesforce solution -ExAM4Government.com. My screen sharing program of choice (5 years ago) died on startup. This began a series of desperate attempts to Google a solution followed by canceling the rest of the days meetings including a sales call. This is bad. Of course the first thing I learned (for about the 50th time) is never, never, never upgrade both machines at the same time. No matter how convenient the timing is or how cool the new features are…it is just a bad idea.
The second thing I learned happened on the desperate support call I made. While on hold I began looking at other screen sharing software. The options are many now several years after I did my first evaluation. I started thinking…maybe it was time to try something new. However once I got on the phone, the gentleman (we’ll call him Hector) was great. He seemed legitimately interested in my well being and dedicated to finding a solution no matter what.
As the time slipped away Hector stayed with me and seemed to really understand not just their software but my issues. He worked through what seemed like a pretty logical progression of steps before finally moving me up a tier in support, where they began to dissect the logs from my crashes.
The whole time I was worried about the next days meetings. What should I do? I literally had my credit card out and was simply debating between my final screen sharing options when it hit me. I needed to give Hector and Scott (Tier 2 Support) a chance to solve this before just stepping off into another product. These guys were working hard and really cared. I decided to wait it out.
Finally, after another 20 minutes or so they got it solved. Changing a setting here and there and I was back in business. I’ve been a customer of this company’s for at least five years now and I’ll continue on. Maybe I should give the other options a chance. Maybe I should do a real evaluation. I won’t do it though. They won me back as a customer with their support. I have had plenty of bad support experiences, so the good ones really stick out.
If you really want customers for life, support them like you care and stick with them until you close the case.
Awesome.
Great post! Loved how you ended, “If you really want customers for life, support them like you care and stick with them until you close the case.” That philosophy is so important, thanks for sharing!