CRM improvements

As for customer relationship management, here are two suggestions for improving:

1. if you send emails with a reply to-address that you don’t monitor, please (easily) make it clear, by using a donotreply prefix instead of hello@captureone.com which indicates it being a normal address. Letting the recipient know, AFTER wasting time responding you, that they can’t is too late. This is so obvious and so stupid that I’d be laughing if I wasn’t directly affected by- if it weren’t so symptomatic to the disrespect I wanted to address, foolishly mistaking hello for an invitation to speak..

Heya!

Feedback;

Upon pressing ”join” and logging in, I’m informed that I already am signed up. -I was indeed one of the beta testers for the iPad/iOS app at one point, which means I could very well be signed up.. However, my feedback/point consists in that you should, for crying out loud, cross check your database of existing beta testers and exclude these from further, redundant, invitations which only just waste our time and make you look, well, not quite 100% pro.

While I have you on the line, may I ask if you intend to reward beta testers better than when I had a run with you? (I believe I got a voucher for a month’s iOS app subscription in return.)

I think, as a general principle, that beta testers who provide value to the developer should get something of value in return. Free use of your software would give the beta testers some actual value in return, the added knowledge, experience, loyalty and sense of appreciation would further increase the beta testers’ value not only through superior performance as beta testers, but surely as unofficial ambassadors as well.

I can only speak with absolute certainty about my own thoughts and opinions. My guesses on mechanisms as far as marketing and psychology goes are nevertheless somewhat educated/experienced as a former business student and nearly 25 years in the photo industry.

In fewer words and bluntly: one or three month’s subscription (that carry no extra cost to you) is more of an insulting than reciprocation for the value your testers provide. (directly correlating to testers’ time and effort (i.e. labour.)).

Maybe you should look through your database of testers, to see if maybe you want to opt for quality rather than quantity? Maybe just work with testers whose work you value more than nothing (€5) and either way, use the registers you have on hand to avoid calling customers/testers to actions that aren’t needed and that really just signals further depreciation of your testers’ past efforts. Most businesses take every opportunity to build and strengthen customer relationships. Despite having all necessary data to easily avoid contacting existing enrollees, you still do. I don’t know if it’s due to laziness, negligence, some other reasons or if the reasons matter, but I do know that it alienates and depreciates the recipient. You claim more unpaid time on enrollment that’s already done while screaming the historical efforts weren’t just un(der)paid but forgotten. We care so much about our own time that we won’t spend the bare minimum needed to avoid urging thousands(?) of customers to waste time on something that’s already 100% done.

Your communication here should, as it easily could, have been avoided. It’s existence only underlines the little, if any, you put in your stock of testers or customers at large. It shows very little respect for your customers and their time overall and especially in comparison to yourselves. Your careless approach to CRM is absolutely horrendous. Had i held stock, I would’ve seriously reconsidered that investment alongside that of being an obviously unappreciated beta tester with 20 years of experience working with C1.

Just saying, though I doubt anyone will read it and take it to heart..

Sincerely,

Adrian Ulander