My $600 CRM was a waste for 8 months until I ran this one report

I spent last January setting up a fancy CRM for my roofing company. Thought I had everything organized. Then I lost a $12,000 job because I forgot to follow up with a lead who called in April. The automated reminders were there, I just never looked at them. Turns out I needed to run a simple 'stale lead' report every Friday. Took me 8 months of missed opportunities to figure that out. Anyone else realize their fancy tool was useless without the right routine?

2 comments

2 Comments

keith_henderson15d ago

Ha! So the tool works fine, it's the user that's broken.

luna_wells5715d ago

I get what you're saying, but I see it a little differently. Saying "the user is broken" kind of brushes off the real problem, which is that tools should be built for real people (not just experts). A lot of us don't have time to read a 50 page manual or mess around with hidden settings to get basic stuff done. If a tool makes it easy to mess up, that's partly the tool's fault. Good design should guide you to the right path, not punish you for not knowing the secret handshake. So yeah, sometimes the user makes a mistake, but calling them "broken" feels like letting the developers off the hook.