Some Companies Still Failing Badly on Self Service Purchases
If I want to buy a new car, I know what I expect of the experience. I will go to a showroom and expect to interact with a salesperson who will ask me things, show me things and generally create emotional involvement and time commitment in order to make sure that my £30,000 is spent wisely.
That is OK
On the other hand, if I want to buy some software like a backup solution, for the small amounts of money, I want to go to a site, look at the offerings, make a choice and NOT interact with any human being unless I am stuck or am planning to invest a lot and need to make sure I'm doing it right. So when a company does not have any kind of self-service pricing....
That is NOT OK.
Why? Because having to contact a company means several things that I would rather not do involving emotional distraction and time. I am likely to get a keen salesperson take up far more of my time than it should take to buy something for £100; they might well want to gauge how rich I am and try and upsell as much as possible, which they cannot do with self-service. They might implicitly add me to their marketing and sales lists on the basis that my call constitutes some kind of "business relationship", despite GDPRs best effort. They might also have such a complicated pricing structure that they cannot easily tell me "how much it is" without asking me 100 questions - if that is the case, the Sales Director should be fired and the pricing simplified into what people want: A small selection of packages including ever increasing features for the money and possibly with bolt-ons for additinal features on a basic package.
What actually happens if you don't have self-service? You lose customers!
Some people try hard and pay big money just to get people to their web site so if I have already come off my own research and leave because you are demanding more from me than I am willing to offer, you are making a major business mistake.
There are 3 companies today who might have offered the best service for the lowest price who will not get my custom simply because they cannot say how much it is!
That is OK
On the other hand, if I want to buy some software like a backup solution, for the small amounts of money, I want to go to a site, look at the offerings, make a choice and NOT interact with any human being unless I am stuck or am planning to invest a lot and need to make sure I'm doing it right. So when a company does not have any kind of self-service pricing....
That is NOT OK.
Why? Because having to contact a company means several things that I would rather not do involving emotional distraction and time. I am likely to get a keen salesperson take up far more of my time than it should take to buy something for £100; they might well want to gauge how rich I am and try and upsell as much as possible, which they cannot do with self-service. They might implicitly add me to their marketing and sales lists on the basis that my call constitutes some kind of "business relationship", despite GDPRs best effort. They might also have such a complicated pricing structure that they cannot easily tell me "how much it is" without asking me 100 questions - if that is the case, the Sales Director should be fired and the pricing simplified into what people want: A small selection of packages including ever increasing features for the money and possibly with bolt-ons for additinal features on a basic package.
What actually happens if you don't have self-service? You lose customers!
Some people try hard and pay big money just to get people to their web site so if I have already come off my own research and leave because you are demanding more from me than I am willing to offer, you are making a major business mistake.
There are 3 companies today who might have offered the best service for the lowest price who will not get my custom simply because they cannot say how much it is!