A Web Services Lesson from Quickbooks

When it comes to web services, Quickbooks gets it. They understand that the work begins after the sale, not leading up to it.

I recently had the opportunity to attend the RIS Media conference. There was a room full of vendors barking about the promised land that would be achieved magically through the adoption of thier products - generate more leads, track this, engage consumers this way, reduce costs here. In preparation for my panel address to the audience, I asked each booth to talk to me about thier support and training services. What happens after the sale?

The responses were dim - in some cases, dark. Clearly they were not prepared to answer such questions.

Today, as a Quickbooks user, I received my monthly “how to” newsletter. You see Intuit, like most world class web service companies takes a careful look at their call center. They group calls into categories and create a feedback loop to the product managers, developers and other product stakeholders. They use the customer newsletter as a training tool.