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January 30, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Are high tech firms denying access to their customers?
Traditionally, reporters try not to complain about how hard their job is. There's a couple of reasons for this. One, unless you're a war correspondent, it isn't really and two, there's something wrong with talking about the process of reporting. It's what you might call inside baseball and nobody much cares.
Nevertheless, I can't let this one go.
I called two giant companies, IBM and Oracle, who will at the drop of a hat tell you about how their products are used by the biggest of the big enterprises.
Fortune 500, that's nothing, we have the Fortune 10, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, they proudly announce.
Unfortunately, if you tell these same high tech companies that you want to talk to one of their giant customers about what they think of their products, suddenly, they're hard to find.
As I said I called IBM and explained my need. Big Blue who will call you if they have a new toner cartridge to announce was suddenly silent. No return phone call.
I called Oracle. After a week of back and forth emails, Oracle has decided "not to participate."
My advice to IT is if you don't already do it, be sure and ask for references. And if you are not able to talk to them without a vendor support person hovering over the phone call, think twice before you commit to their product line.
Posted by Ephraim. Schwartz on January 30, 2006 11:40 AM
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I'll offer several reasons (that I have personally experienced working for software vendors over the years) that have little to do with having something to hide:
1. It's not the job of the person you contacted to maintain relations with customers, and they don't know whose job it is.
2. We don't really know who our customers are (as individual people, anyway). The sales guy does, but he's not talking.
3. We asked our customer, but they are not about to talk to the press without explicit permission from the CEO. That will take about six weeks to get (if you are lucky).
The morale? Software vendors do a really poor job of knowing and understanding their customer. Customer relations is generally an afterthought, if any thought at all.
Posted by: Peter Varhol at January 30, 2006 05:27 PMTOP STORIES
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