Interspire is a 6 year-old company based in Australia with offices in the United States and the U.K. These guys were passionate about software and wrote PHP and ASP versions of their applications. The software allowed anyone and I do mean anyone, to build, operate and update a website quickly, easily and without knowing any html or other coding languages. From time-to-time I’ve hired freelancers to customize some of my sites but I actually learned to do much of this work myself because Interspire’s applications were easy to use and easy to correct any errors that I made.
If memory serves me well, they even installed the software absolutely free of charge. At some point they stopped building ASP versions and focused their attention on building great PHP web-based software applications.
Monster.com, GE, Shell, Intel and many other large corporations use Interspire’s applications and although I’m by no means a corporate giant, I was proud to be in such prestigious company, felt that I had made some very wise choices and was overall, a very happy camper.
Back about 4 years ago when Interspire was a two-year old startup, the response times and support were superior to anything else out there.
I believe that as Interspire has grown, the issues have grown along with the company, hence the term “growing pains.” The support times have gotten longer, there is now a charge to have the software installed (okay, I understand this one–software installation does cost time, effort and money), instead of paying an annual support fee that included upgrades, Interspire changed the names of some products and required loyal customers to pay for a new version instead of getting upgrades with their support agreements. I know for a fact that this resulted in a number of disgruntled customers who vowed to never return to Interspire.
Throughout all of this, I’ve remained a loyal customer.
In the coaching and training I do for companies, I find that many times there is a certain point where growth exceeds the company’s ability to maintain the same level of responsiveness and support. As a company expands, it becomes more and more difficult to quickly attract, train and retain a top quality pool of talent.
In many instances companies unwittingly attract talent from the shallow end of the talent pool. This is similar to what happens when a professional sports league expands. When new teams are added, there is a greater need for talent resulting in teams signing players that under other circumstances would be considered minor leaguers at best.
I understand that Interspire is a for-profit enterprise and I understand that Interspire has changed its business model somewhat over the years as well but sometimes I’m beginning to feel as if redundancy is being built in for the sake of profits vs. better products and seemless product integration.
I purchased Interspire’s Shopping Cart last May. I’ve very happy with it–I feel that it’s a great piece of software and a good value.
Earlier this week I upgraded from a version of SendStudio to Email Marketer and I’m very happy with the new software as well. I feel that Interspire earned my upgrade dollars by providing a superior application. The problem arose when I tried to re-integrate Shopping Cart with Email Marketer. I couldn’t get the XML token to work.
Interspire’s support responded to my support ticket request by telling me that my version of Shopping Cart isn’t compatible with the version of Email Marketer that I just paid another $249.00 for. The solution? Upgrade Shopping Cart for another $200.00. Had I known that the new version of email marketer wasn’t compatible with my version of Shopping Cart (support and updates ran out about 6 months ago,) I would have reconsidered my decision to upgrade in the first place.
In essence, my decision to upgrade may cause me to pay more money to upgrade something else that I don’t think needs upgrading at this time. At the very least, getting emails from Shopping Cart into Email Marketer will become more onerous because I’ll have to do it manually.
Great companies find a way to overcome these challenges and continue on their upward trajectory. I sincerely hope that Interspire puts their customer’s needs and backward compatibility ahead of making a buck. If they can build this kind of foresight into their business model, their customers will more than reward them with more sales, referral business, more support contracts and greater profits.
Tags: Dookie Companies, Dookie Policies by admin
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