In one of my consulting gigs, I'm responsible for helping my company select a Web Analytics vendor. I've been both amused and shocked by just how clueless some of these vendors are.First of all, several of the companies have repeatedly not had someone answer the phone when I've dialed their sales extensions; I've just gotten voicemail. That, IMHO, is lame enough, but my favorite was this message:

"Hi, this is Jim Smith in sales at Overpriced Analytics. Leave a message and I'll get back with you."

That firm has just one salesperson?! I'd have felt a bit better if the outgoing message was something like "You've reached the sales department of Overpriced Analytics. Please leave a message, and someone will get back with you within [x] business hours."

Yet another firm wasn't able to make a conference-call appointment with my company's team when I called, and instead offered to call me back on Monday to let me know about available times. Have they not heard of a company calendar via Exchange or Lotus or something like that?

I can understand less-than-stellar pre-sales customer service for free or low-priced applications, but for service agreements costing $50K per year? Just ridiculous.

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