Problem or opportunity?

Dennis Howlett talks about the "problem" that Software as a Service (SaaS) vendors have in providing excellent technical support.

Because SaaS is a relatively new field, and because there's no long-term contracts or heavy capital investment to tie customers in, the technical support for an SaaS product must be even better than a desktop-based package.

Me, I'd call that an opportunity, not a problem.

Let's face it, times is hard. Paying customers are to be taken care of, not taken for granted.

And excellent support is one of the best ways to do that. No matter how good your sales team, no matter how good your initial training, there will always be on-going queries with the product, if not problems. Computers have got minds of their own.

But a good support team will be talked about on blogs like this and on Twitter, and potential customers will be interested.

So hats off to those vendors who are investing in their support team and support facilities now - and boo to those who are reducing their support team because they don't bring any money in :-)