I agree to all of this but find ignorance and indifference are the best way to get your customers backs up.
Why should I care how much "effort" a Company is putting into what they perceive is important if I am receiving no support to fix my problem? Someone once told me that "Features" are usually added to appease potential purchasers, whereas "Fixes" are for the loyal users. We are seeing too many features that few people want, and too few fixes that are mission-critical to the users. Software is bloating up. If a company is working on solutions to problems and not telling the userbase that they are beavering away at a fix (or suite of fixes), who is stupid? The Company for hoping everyone will assume "all will be well - sometime" or the customer for saying "you aren't listening to me?". I am an advocare of "No news is NEVER good news". Some companies have enough customers to treat them complacently and be happy. Others spend fortunes trying to atract new customers and seemingly don't care about how many existing customers they lose through something as straight forward as communication. It is rare to get a company that is more focussed on "what do they want", rather than "what are we going to give them". I understand James's position: Ignore me once and I'll ask again. Ignore me twice and I'll ask again (after all, I have a large investment in training and softwarfe to consider), Ignore me a third time and I'll ask again (after all, I still have a large investment in training and softwarfe to consider), but I'll start reconsidering my options, etc... etc... The question is: What do you do when you are ignored repeatedly? You can only assume that the company falls into the "lucky" position of having such a market share that losing a few customers and generating some bad feeling and a bit of adverse publicity is not important. The solution is then clear: 1) Deal with companies who consider YOUR business important. Deal with the ones that answer your queries even though it may seem unimportant to them at that time. And be prepared to pay for such a service. Or 2) Use open-source (or internally-supported) code and put the money saved on support back into the business. Each to their own. Chris Tansell Consulting Partner Heron Consulting Pty Ltd Ph: 0412 163302 Fax: (08) 9463 6068 www.heronconsulting.com.au -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Richard Terry Sent: Wednesday, 14 February 2007 8:45 AM To: General Practice Computing Group Talk Subject: [GPCG_TALK] Sorry to see you go I'd try not to be so upset by the list and urge you to reconside your leaving. As a casual observer on this list (and see my comment I made to that effect that Medtech was being unfairly singled out), I personally feel the comments made such as 'another slack NZ company' are unwarrented and offensive. Also having watched the comments on this list for some time, I don't beleive that many of the members have an inkling of just how difficult it is to bring software up from concept to production, and just how many of the bugs that appear to be coming from a program can be todo with flaws in the underlying operating system, the software tools used, and networking problems etc. I draw a distinction between commenting on what one does/does not like about software and criticism of the companies or their employees etc. Individuals on this list can have no knowledge whatsoever on the internal workings of a company unless they are employed in that company. All they can do is make external observations which may/may not be correct. Most human beings I believe, work hard at doing the right thing by their fellow human beings. I know a number of practices who have been more than happy with the stability of medtech and have been happy to accept what they see as the limitations in its functionality in the Australian Setting. All software has bugs. One of the beauties about open source is that they are quickly discovered and corrected, and the solution put back into the community. Sincerely Richard Terry _______________________________________________ Gpcg_talk mailing list [email protected] http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk _______________________________________________ Gpcg_talk mailing list [email protected] http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk
