This post is mainly my summary and commentary based on comments from the last 5 posts. I’ll start by summarizing what has already happened. It is hugely long because there are so many facets to the problem.
Goal
The goal here is to propose a model for revamping SolidWorks subscription (maintenance, support and new versions) offerings. SolidWorks says they are a customer driven company, and this will put that assertion to the test. My guess is that when they run the numbers they have more to lose by allowing people to choose what they need instead of forcing them to buy what they don’t need or want than they have to gain by perceived good will toward all customers. So we will see if this is a customer driven company or a bean counter driven company. Time to put your money where your mouth is, SolidWorks.
Background
This started as a simple notice that a late fee that few people ever actually pay is being increased almost 50%. It turns out that if you want to skip a year of maintenance (support and new versions), it winds up costing you more money than if you stay on maintenance. This late fee is clearly meant as a deterrent, not an additional fund raising scheme. SolidWorks uses the threat of assessing the fee to keep you from lapsing on maintenance payments. My guess is that once weened from that maintenance teat, former customers tend to not go back.
I’m guessing that what prompted SW to increase this fee is that people are not re-upping for subscription after the 2008 release. I still believe that the overall average perception of SW08 is that it was among the worst releases ever - full of half completed changes, the most extreme changes used as defaults, miscalculated new features, too much visual fluff, obsoleted not-so-old hardware at an alarming rate, required too much retraining, and overall shows that the SolidWorks Corporation is not in touch with the majority of real users.
My opinion here is that SolidWorks should not charge its users for its own mistakes. SW08 was a mistake. I think it’s a mistake big enough for someone to lose their job over, although I’m not in a position to say who. They took a risk, and were bitten by the downside. I don’t think charging customers for the failed attempt is the right thing to do.
Rewarding loyal customers
Last SolidWorks World, I started asking people (Wilkinson, Hiss) in interviews what SolidWorks was doing to reward loyalty from long time users. I don’t think I got any clear answers. Between the new late fee and the interface changes that erased many of the gains SW has made over the years, I think we have our answer. I need to say that some of the 2008 interface changes were positive, but I can show quantitatively for most of the so-called improvements, there are mitigating factors that offset their effectiveness. Two steps forward, two steps back. In several cases, the new functionality is unquestionably inferior to the old functionality (removing CommandManager options, removing slider and splitter bars, removing the ability to remove face colors, the entire 2008 colors/appearances scheme, using left click context bars from the FeatureManager, removing interface images from the documentation, and I’m sure there are many more).
Hit a nerve
I knew when I decided to write this short post that it was going to create a stir. Some people like Rob Rodriguez and Devon Sowell have subscription as a bit of a pet peeve. I wasn’t really prepared for what happened, though. I had 75 comments over the course of 3 days. My average is probably 3 comments per post, and I post 2-3 x per week. I was getting 1200 hits a day for a couple of posts and the main page. My usual is 300 – 400 hits per day for the main page. I got 6 notices about new forums that people wanted me to contribute to. Usually, this doesn’t happen at all. I’ve never had a SW VP comment on my blog before. I had a couple of SW employees contact me about the blog, which only has happened a couple of times before. A couple of people who are upbeat about almost everything commented that they didn’t like the looks of this one (Ricky J and SolidSmack).
So yes, I hit a nerve. Subscription is the 800 lb gorilla at most user group meetings. People want to express outrage, but they don’t do it because it feels futile, and because it has been done so many times before. This is how a stupid fee that no one ever pays turned into the biggest train wreck Matt Writes has ever seen.
Lipstick on the pig
So SolidWorks is trying to attract new users through a sexy consumer product-ish “lipstick on the pig” approach, and yanking the rug out from under loyal customers. The sexy new colors, visual effects, backgrounds, shadows, reflections, Appearances, RealView and what not combine I’m sure to look spell binding in demos to Inventor users, but in practice for existing users are very much a distraction. Why have resources been squandered on this kind of thing instead of improving functionality? These issues are cosmetic, and treat the SolidWorks software as if it is a new way to package Barbie dolls instead of an engineering tool. To me, this is incredibly misguided, a waste of time and resources, and displays an out of touch mentality. Of course you can find people who find things like this useful, but you can say the same for Toolbox, Deform Surface Push and the Undercut Detection.
The match
When I was told that Rich Welch was going to make a public statement that would clear up the misconceptions about the late fees, I was momentarily appeased, but kind of wondered what misconceptions there were. The notice that went out was pretty clear except that it allows for first a $500 fee to be charged, and then an additional $850 fee.
Unfortunately, Welch simply threw a match into the building with some incredibly poorly chosen words, and then attempted to put out the fire by dousing it with gasoline. This self immolation was an incredible thing to behold. Here we have a guy at VP level who aparently has never seen a real user before, and doesn’t stay in touch with what real users have to say about anything. I personally don’t think Mr. Welch can effectively continue at a job in Customer Services at SolidWorks Corp after this train wreck. Really, I mean I can’t avoid laughing out loud thinking about the situation. Not the fact that he could and should lose his job, which would be personally tragic for him, but just exactly how naively stupid could he be, talking in a condescending fashion to users during a minor crisis? The Vice President of User Services?!?!? Who could possibly have any confidence left in a guy like that in such an important leadership role? If you haven’t read it, you owe it to yourself to do so. Read the 5 posts immediately preceding this one.
What users want
I took a poll that suggests that most users who answered the poll are paying their subscription, but that they don’t think they get good value for that money. Most users find their resellers are not all that they should be. People seem to be split on the service pack issue, whether the SPs are of much value, if they should be free, or if they should not exist at all.
A previous poll seems to suggest that people on average think that a new version every 18 months is about right. This would mean that a yearly subscription in many cases would not allow a user to get a new version of the software. Users are not thinking in terms of annual subscription because it is an artificial model forced on them by accountants, not something that naturally suggests itself from the practical realities of using, supporting and maintaining software. You can build a building while ignoring the realities of gravity, but that story will have a bad ending. I think SolidWorks needs to pay more attention to natural forces than imposed goals achieved by any means available.
Users want options. Many users expressed a distaste for paying for service from a reseller who simply is not capable of providing the service. Others expressed distaste for paying for bug fixes which should be free anyway. Some users think the software should be closer to actually complete when it is released.
SolidWorks is in the business of forcing customers to buy stuff they don’t need. This is the only believable explanation for eliminating SW Office several years ago. You can’t get Photoworks without also buying PDMWorks. Your choices are stripped down SW or the Office suite with PDMW.
I think the days of the one-size-fits-all, all-or-nothing subscription are long past its usefulness. These days there is a wider range of SW users than ever before. Some users are far more sophisticated than even the best resellers. Some are new or part time users, late comers to parametrics, 3D and the entire concept. You cannot use the same model to support the entire range.
Users want SW to test their software more thoroughly, rather than forcing customers to actually pay to help debug released software. Its PREPOSTEROUS! All software has bugs, sure, but SolidWorks releases software with maybe thousands of known bugs. Why do we pay to do beta testing if you aren’t even gonna fix the freaking bugs we find in beta? Why do we volunteer to do alpha testing if you don’t fix the conceptual errors in the software?
Divide and conquer
Overall, most of the comments from users were well thought out, and only a few qualify as emotional rants. The same themes keep appearing again and again. The one thing that has happened here is that users see that even though they may use the software differently, we have very similar needs on the business side of things. Once people start talking and realizing that they have ideas in common, it became a common cause.
I’m sure this is why SolidWorks uses the “divide and conquer” psychology in their enhancement request process. They can conquer each of us individually, but if we ever banded together, we could beat them. Throwing data down a black hole on the SolidWorks site never results in a community reaction like what has happened here. It just results in frustration and resignation.
I did have a couple of reseller employees comment, and interestingly enough they waited until the very end to say anything.
The problem of resellers
Resellers can be good or bad. In fact, within a single organization you can have individuals that do a good job and individuals tht do a bad job. So it’s not always a simple thing to say that “resellers suck” because it’s not always true. And even in a sucky reseller organization, there are usually good individuals.
Anyway, I’m not so concerned with whether resellers suck or not. They either do or do not. I’m more concerned that SW can not do business without resellers. So while I may agree with some of the reasons for users wanting to eliminate resellers, it’s just not a realistic part of the solution.
On the other hand, resellers get fat on the SW subscription money, and if I were a betting sort, I would bet on that several resellers saw their subscription money going down after 2008 and complained to SW Corp to do something about it. I’ve seen good resellers hit rock bottom when it comes to the quality of technical support they provide. There is no incentive to provide good support because in order to do that, they would have to hire top notch users instead of beginners to do tech support. Many…(most?)… resellers hire people who don’t even know the software to do tech support. Again, this is not universal, because some resellers do provide quality service that is worth paying for.
Quite honestly, the best support comes from other users on the forums. Rarely a reseller will have insight into a problem that other do not. SolidWorks could hardly insulate its users from any more technical information than they do now, but users find a way, and the information gets out. Yes, I am implying that SolidWorks holds information hostage trying to prop up the value of the reseller chain in general.
Does this mean hard times for the resellers instead of just milking that ol’ cash cow and never feeding it? For some, yes. Evolve or perish. You can’t keep working off of the old PTC model to constantly bilk customers.
Answer?
To me it seems clear. In order to incentivize resellers to provide great support, we should stop subsidizing bad support. People who don’t want support still want new versions and service packs. So what’s happening is that SW is subsidizing resellers by forcing users to pay for support that in many cases doesn’t exist, and the customer doesn’t want or can’t use.
Separate goods from services. If you want technical support from your reseller, pay for it. If you don’t, don’t. Could anything make any more sense? If you want new versions, pay for them. If you don’t, don’t.
Service packs should be free. I will stick to that one. You can’t bundle new functionality with bug fixes and act like that justifies forcing people to pay for bug fixes. Common work ethic demands that you are responsible for fixing your own mistakes, especially if your customers are the ones who identify them for you.
How much?
Say the software is $4000, because you can still get a version for that price. If you want full boat support, you can get it for $1295, just like now. If you want just tech support, that’s at a rate you can negotiate with your reseller, say $500 annually per license with a 30% progressive discount for each additional license, or on a per incident or hourly basis, say $50-100 per incident depending on how involved it is.
If you want just upgrades, say that’s fixed at $800 for the next consecutive version, $1200 to upgrade after skipping a version, until maybe after skipping 5 versions the upgrade fee caps out at maybe $3000. You always get some benefit from having been a customer, instead of the current plan, where they have a fair price for new customers but rape old customers.
Service packs are free. Do you hear me? So if people don’t want to upgrade until SP5, that’s fine.
You also have to determine what kind of support is expected just from buying the software:
- help with getting a serial number and whatever it takes to activate the license
- bug reports
Resellers should not be responsible for answering “how to” questions for people who are not on support. Anything beyond that is paid support, training or consulting. We have to stop subsidizing resellers who don’t provide good support. If a reseller offers tech support, training, and consulting, where does he put his top people? Of course, in consulting. That is the one area where competence matters. Tech support is a throw away, because, what if your support sucks? There are no consequences. If your training sucks, well, at least you still have the corporate manuals, which are worth something. But even with training, SW keeps info from users so well that they almost have to go to official training to learn how to use the software. So that is half subsidized as well.
If you stop subsidizing bad support and mediocre training, those areas will improve. Stop subsidizing by allowing users to choose which they want to pay for.
One of the favorite reseller tricks about tech support is to say “this is beyond the scope of technical support, may I suggest Advanced Assemblies training class next month?” What really is tech support? Is it for stupid “how to” questions? Is it for new release stuff? Are hardware, OS or network problems in the realm of tech support? Is it only for bugs or workarounds? Should it cover complex solutions that might be considered consulting? It’s a tough question to answer, and I don’t think this is really defined anywhere.
And here’s one that just from me personally. SolidWorks does not MAKE me productive. I make myself productive. Rich talks about the software as if you could set a toilet in front of the computer and it would be productive if the computer had SolidWorks on it. I really resent this stupid attitude. It is only the combination of a user with know how and a particular project need that makes productivity. And frankly, I think the user is a better judge of productivity than someone sitting in an office in Concord contemplating navel fuzz.
And another one from me personally. Long time users and advanced users are almost completely overlooked by SW. SW seems to be focussed on converting new users rather than keeping old ones. I read somewhere that it costs 8X as much to regain a former customer as to retain an existing customer.
If SW tries to charge for its forums, they will die and everyone will go to Eng-Tips or somewhere else. The forums are currently the best place for support, as comp.cad.solidworks was for many years before.
Product Quality
This topic is a perennial favorite. The last time it was addressed formally was with Richard Welch, and of course there were all of these assertions that SW was doing everything humanly possible to make sure the product was the best it could be. Of course nothing really improved.
My biggest gripe about the quality of the SW software is that it is perpetually half done. The biggest problems are the little things that never get fixed. You have to be on subscription because if you aren’t you’re going to have a big hassle getting service packs, and you need service packs because the software has so many bugs and there is such a rabid inclination to upgrade as soon as the software is released.
SW should at least provide what has become known as SP3 quality at initial release. SP3 is the “best practice” adoption date that many companies go by. You should be able to use released software right out of the box. Common work ethic, guys. Have a little pride in what you do. You don’t even bother fixing beta bugs that you know about. This is inexcusable, especially if you want to charge people extra for support.
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