About Good Vendors

We recently switched to a new CRM at SuperAgent, and with so many players in that space, the comparison shopping is a daunting process. Paul Greenberg’s exhaustive 2011 CRM Watchlist is a great place to start.

Long story short: we chose Batchbook for a number of reasons (in order): UI simplicity, met required feature set, and price.

What I want to talk about is what happened next:

A week after opening our account I received the industry-standard automated follow-up email “How is everything working out?”, but the signature was of the President of the company, Pamela O’Hara.

I replied directly with a couple of workflow suggestions and within a couple days received:

“Thanks so much for the message and for taking the time to give such detailed feedback…This is great stuff – [I'll] make sure we put it to good use. We’re working on a major update of Batchbook right now.”
signed, Pamela O’Hara.

I forwarded that to our sales manager which put him at ease with the product because he understands that we found a responsive vendor.

A elegant formula for service: send automated emails out from a real person, let your customers reply, then respond. So simple. So right.