Good, Fast and Cheap – Pick 2!

By Gary · Sunday, October 7th, 2007

An old adage says if you want something to be good fast and cheap, keep dreaming. You can have 2 out of 3. If you want it:

Yeah – you get what you pay for! In Is Free Good? by Matthew Hurst, he makes two points – free does not necessarily equate to good or consistent, and that free often means no or limited service. Could not agree more.

However, service model levels are often based on how the provider defines “free”. Free may be that it costs the consumer nothing although the product/service could be extremely profitable through other sources of revenue or as a hook for other very profitable services. The truth is that unless you pay for premium support, it is getting harder and harder to speak to a human, and when you do communication is challenging and the solutions are often less than satisfactory – especially on the first call and that is after an extended wait. So pray tell – what do you think the solution should be? How about better management of expectations AND better products? But then again – what right do we have to complain – it’s free!

Topics: ROI, Service · Tags:

Comments

By Jaques Feroux on October 28th, 2007 at 10:48 am

Couldn’t agree more Gary – very insightful and interesting. People always want the best and not pay for it. It’s amusing that large companies think that working for them is an honourand that small companies should discount for the priviledge of having them as a reference.

 

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