Comments on: Why do SaaS firms give such great service?

By: Duane Jackson

Duane Jackson — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 11:37:39 +0000

Hi Ian,

Have you contacted support@kashflow.com with those questions? That’s the quickest way to get your answers

Duane

By: Ian

Ian — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 07:49:47 +0000

“Most of the other SaaS companies also provide remarkably high levels of customer service.”

You’ve obviously never tried to use Netscape (8 months to reply to an email) or 37Signals (Jason Fried’s computer says No).

We’ve been with KF a long time and I think you’ve done a reasonable job of keeping up and responding to customer needs. Here are a couple more:

(1) We really need a simple, flexible interface to pull any combination of information we want out of KashFlow and into Excel/Google Spreadsheets. **This is getting to be a key issue***.

(2) The iPhone app needs re-thinking. It’s very slow and it needs to respond to what people in the field mostly want it for, eg in my case __quickly__ emailing quotes, and taking orders, often in the customer’s presence. ***This would be a stupendous sales tool*** Imagine being able to put a quote on the custmer’s desktop and have him issue an order right away, while the issue is still hot!!!

By: John Paterson

John Paterson — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 20:04:38 +0000

That’s we call it “Software and a Service” – the customer is not simply buying software in a different way, renting it rather than purchasing it – but buying a SERVICE as well, from a vendor that (as you say) is keen to keep you happy, and therefore subscribing. It happens to be easier to support SaaS customers (because you can log on and help them if they need it), but it is the service ATTITUDE that makes a difference – does the software vendor think this is something they have to (unfortunately) provide, or is a key part of the offering?