I'm sorry but I still can't agree with this. Maybe its simply different things work for different people/companies, but I certainly fall into your small commercial concern and my livlihood would indeed be compromised by a drop off in sales - I simply do not think that a negative piece of publicity has this causal relationship with sales. To me the key is in maximising the quality of the product and the customer service. If you have faith in your product then you would want to face the critisism in order to determine what you are doing wrong and put it right. Further, by not being afraid of doing this in public you demonstrate that faith. To me this is more important to small companies than to large corporations since the customer facing staff in the large corporations would tend to be less close to their product than us small producers who really care about what we are producing. I honestly do not believe that TsTools would have become the success that it has if I had not had the opportunity to face up to and discuss issues with customers and potential customers in an open public forum.johndibben wrote:I guess its difficult for those who have small commercial concerns as one or two individuals' livelyhoods might be greatly affected by bad publicity.
It maybe a significant part of their income or they might be working towards it becoming their sole income.
Microsoft and Kuju get plenty of adverse comments but I doubt they care or have need to.
For some its a hobby from which they decide to make their lielyhood.
Their friends then become their customers as do anyone they're not so friendly with.
To have their own forum then becomes very risky.
There is a topic in the TsTools forum on this site, the title is Thinking about buying the Pro Version ??? Think again ... and the first sentence reads Hi!, I've had some extremely unpleasant experience with "dcm" - the people behind the TsTools...
Now, I could quite easily have deleted the topic and tried to subdue the poster 'off air', but why should I do that - by talking through the problems, seeing where I was going wrong, discussing it with anyone who wanted to become involved, I was not only able to improve the product, but the poster became a very loyal customer, who even went on to recommend the program to other people.
This is not a selfless attitude - I honestly believe that being open and accountable like this actually enhances the credibility and reputation, and therefore the sales, of a company. I don't know whether 3DTS lost a customer (dforrest) as a result of the event described in the first posting of this topic, but they certainly lost the faith of an individual - as has been said above - its a shot in the foot.
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Cheers,
Dave C
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