Wow maybe I’m really dreaming right now and not just enjoying my morning cup of coffee, reading my favorite blogs.

AutoTask, did you really post this information about a customer on the internet? WOW really? a little guy? you had to crush him, publicly embarrass him to make sure he will never post his opinion again? I get stating what really happened, but this, this, is just WOW. You had made your point way before this paragraph.

You’re lucky this guy doesn’t drive to your office. despicable.

Sorry but we’re not friends on facebook anymore…lol

AutoTask wrote:

“In addition, we always ask customers who leave to share with us their reasons for cancellation, so that we can either cure the situation, or learn what we need to do better. Your stated reason for cancellation was “financial hardship,” and that you told us you were cutting as many expenses as possible. You also told us that you would consider using us again if/when things turned around for you.”

Personally I think it must speak volumes about Autotask as a company. Especially when I can’t find anyone from Connectwise pulling the low blow punches that multiple people from Autotask have in this post. Wow.

Frankly, you were right. I apologize. Thanks for your honesty. I should have just denied the report and moved on.

Bob Godgart
Autotask

Hi, Paul. Sorry that you feel that didn’t have a good experience with our product. But I checked our records, and here’s what I found:

You signed up for Autotask Go! more than a year and a half ago in January 3, 2008, and only had the product for five months. (BTW, when you cancelled on June 5, 2008, we even credited you for the month in which you cancelled, even though you were already billed contractually obligated to pay the last month).

Also, there are no service tickets in our system from you complaining of speed issues, and no notes or e-mails from you either… and We ALWAYS document all customer calls, e-mails and service tickets inside of Autotask.

We also always check-in with our customers a month or two after implementation with an initial satisfaction survey. When we contacted you and asked how things were going with survey question, you us a 5 out of 5 “Very Satisfied” when asked how satisfied you were overall.

In addition, we always ask customers who leave to share with us their reasons for cancellation, so that we can either cure the situation, or learn what we need to do better. Your stated reason for cancellation was “financial hardship,” and that you told us you were cutting as many expenses as possible. You also told us that you would consider using us again if/when things turned around for you.

You had that opportunity to complain about about speed issues, about lack of browser support, or even being unhappy that we were not listening to you. Since our Autotask Go! contracts are all month-to-month, you had nothing to fear about telling us the truth at that time.

I’m not sure what your post here has to do with Joe’s original blog post, or what motivated you to write it. But the gist of your complaint about us seems to be that we don’t listen. But the facts here suggest that you may not have taken advantage of the opportunties we presented to you to speak to us.

I think that the vast majority of our customers would disagree with your assessment of us. We’d love for you to come back and give Autotask — the platform, and the company — another try.

Much in the way that Microsoft increasingly competed with Oracle (and vice versa), I do wonder if a few years from now we’ll see PSA and RMM players competing in some areas.
-jp

I also had an issue with them relying on Active X controls as I do NOT use IE, I use Mozilla Firefox. I install Firefox on all my clients machines, explain to them the security risks associated with IE and suggest that they ONLY use IE when they must (Micrsoft’s website, etc.) My clients’ default browser is Firefox, so the AT Client Ticket Generator wouldn’t work and it was confusing for people. (One of my motivating factors to buy)

When I approached AT about this on their tech support line, I was referred to their forum. Ok, fine. I found a post regarding this and replied to it. I was QUICKLY flamed and an AT employee, I can’t remember his name, but he was an Officer of the company, told me to basically deal with it because they were NOT going to change it.

There were several Engineers that had an issue with this functionality. All I wanted them to do was to edit the Client Service Ticket portion. I never expect or asked to have the entire application re-written.

My impression of AT is that it was NOT a tool that helps me do what I do Better, cheaper, faster, but rather an expense to a vendor that is going to be non responsive to my input. I canceled my membership shortly after that incident.

I would spend money on a tool that makes my life easier, streamlines what I do and helps me stay on top of my business. I won’t spend money on an “Can’t be done” attitude for any reason.

btw, in case it is brought up, I have always had the fastest internet connection available in my area and always will. The cost is relatively not an issue when i look at the increased speed in which I can do what I need to do.

Judging from the current integration possibilities between various PSA and RMM products, I can only say that there is much room for improvement! And there is at least one RMM vendor (that I know of) that seems to believe that integrating traditional PSA functionality into its RMM product set is going to make its solution more valuable to its clients and that is Kaseya with their imminent introduction of a Service Desk module. Although Kaseya maintains that they will never be a full function PSA product, I cannot help to wonder how traditional PSA vendors must feel when one of their most important components of their solution is successfully implemented in the toolset of a leading RMM vendor.

I am quite interested to see how relationships between PSA and RMM vendors evolve over the next 12 months…

Mark Geschke
Managing Director
Space Age Technologies

So many of the MSPs here use your stuff, so be the bigger man. I bet you can do it and that you’re better than that.

Stu