Open Letter to the President of RedZee

RedZee. You all know it. It's that site with the cute Zebra that constantly (daily?) calls you soliciting ads in their search engine. After multiple calls per week, I checked them out online and found a boatload of negative press! Well, obviously I wanted the calls to stop. But I also wanted to alert them to their problem, and help them fix it. I emailed the President, John Stewart (no, not THAT John Stewart) to share my experience and advice. Here's what I wrote:

Dear Mr. Stewart,

I am writing to you on behalf of Capterra, Inc.

After receiving many unwanted phone calls from RedZee, and despite many requests to have the calls stop, we are still hearing from your reps. From what I understand after several phone conversations with your sales team, the RedZee sales department does not have a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. A CRM system would allow you to maintain records of past customers like Capterra, as well as cold call prospects like the countless other companies who blog and post ad nauseam about your ineffective and annoying sales calls.

There are hundreds of available options for CRM software, and if you are simply overwhelmed with the volume of choices, then I suggest using Capterra's free Software Finder located here (www.capterra.com). Using this Software Finder, I found several CRM solutions that serve up to 500 users (your sales reps), contain the "contact history" feature to alert your reps not to call us, and cost less than $1,000. Considering all of the negative press RedZee is getting online, as well as the amount of time your sales reps waste calling Capterra and other companies who do not want to hear from you, $1,000 is probably the best investment you will make for the rest of the year.

Maybe it is not the overwhelming number of options, or a lack of funds, that is stopping you from implementing a CRM system. Perhaps your company is just unwilling to maintain standard call center practices. I hope this is not the case. But if it is, then I will do my part to convince you otherwise. Every time I receive a phone call from RedZee, I will assume that you have not yet implemented CRM software and I will contact your call center manager to explain the importance of such a system.

I hope you will take our advice, and the advice of countless other companies who have written about RedZee online, and start tracking your sales process. In the meantime we request yet again that your sales reps not call us. We know that you are there, and we know how to contact you if we decide to try your service again - an outcome that is doubtful based on our previous results with your search engine, and becomes less likely with each phone call we receive.

Regards,
Chase Maggiano

Chase Maggiano
Capterra, Inc.
www.capterra.com