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Rediculous cold calls from Autodesk

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Message 1 of 11
JamesMaeding
1173 Views, 10 Replies

Rediculous cold calls from Autodesk

I just got a call from a gal at Autodesk, on “behalf” of our reseller. Right.

Our reseller is one of the best in the business IMO.  Bet they will be happy to hear their company name dragged around.

 

She asked if I was aware of the subscription center, and if I was “maximizing its benefit”.

She talked as if reading off a list.  The poor gal did not realize that is like asking a car owner if they knew what the glove compartment was, and if they knew about the owner’s manual in it.

Maybe a few people would be inept enough to admit they did not know about subscription, but anyone with brains would guess they were pulling your leg if they said no.

Was she trying to see if our reseller “forgot” to mention subscription?

No matter how you slice it, it insulted someone by asking such a question.

 

How embarrassing for AutoDesk.  I never get calls asking if I am getting excessive crashing, or if the CUI bugs we have been dealing with for years and years are still wasting our time.

Between the online surveys and these kinds of calls, more damage is beeing done by uneducated marketing, than good.

 

As an example of uneducated marketing’s counter productivity, consider that if I paid for subscription, and don’t know of its benefit, the worst thing you can do is remind me I am not using it.

Now I need to reconsider if it’s really worth buying.  Fortunately for Autodesk, very few buy subscription for the support, they do it for budget reasons, or the home use license and other minor things.

It is interesting, though, that since NNTP support was cut for discussion groups which are the competition to adesk support, the quality and number of experienced people visiting and helping has gone down.

That is one way to make a support service look better, lower the bar.  Problem is the support people learn from the discussion groups too, so bars on both sides went down equally.

 

It seems Autodesk is “minimizing advertising benefit” to put it in terms their marketing team claims to understand.  What a total epic fail, to put in my 9 year old's terms.


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10 REPLIES 10
Message 2 of 11
dgorsman
in reply to: JamesMaeding

Waffling a bit on this comment.  The "scripted" questions can be easily explained by a new hire who is not familiar with the company or procedures, and is just the thing a new hire would be assigned to.  On the other hand the cold calling process would be arranged by a supervisor who should know what is going on, what the subscription program is, etc.

----------------------------------
If you are going to fly by the seat of your pants, expect friction burns.
"I don't know" is the beginning of knowledge, not the end.


Message 3 of 11
pendean
in reply to: JamesMaeding

Sounds like your company needs to work on screening calls: cold calls are a sales reality from anyone with anything to sell (maybe even your company does it).

 

And cold-calls are just that: thoughtless fishing expeditions to drum up new business (ask many a hapless office intern who bought 200 cases of paper thinking they were saving the company money) and home owners buying useless services.

Message 4 of 11
JamesMaeding
in reply to: pendean

I don't actually get many sales calls like this, except from resellers that somehow get through.

Its not these calls in general that annoy me, but this one from Autodesk was just so odd.

Even a car dealership that I bought my wifes car from sends me more educated advertisements than Autodesk is.

I really would not have minded the call if it was someone that at least sounded like THEY knew what the subscription center was.

That is just torture to make someone call like that, kind of speaks more about Autodesk's treatment of employees than anything.

I like seeing people work instead of collecting from our taxes, but telemarketing does not fall into my category of productive activity.

You still have to feel for the callers, could have been me in other circumstances....


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Message 5 of 11
OMCUSNR
in reply to: JamesMaeding

With all telemarketing, if I didn't initiate the call, I just hang up.  I don't care if I'm rude for that or not, I did not ask them to try to steal my time.  If I initiate the call, looking for information, or resources, that's a different matter.  I'm trying to find something that I believe will benefit me, not what someone else thinks will.

 

ADSK is no different.

 

Reid

Homebuilt box: I5-2500k, MSI P67A-GD65, 12gig DDR3 1600 ram, ASUS ENGTX460 Video card, WD Velociraptor WD4500HLHX HD, Win 7 64 pro.
Message 6 of 11
jggerth1
in reply to: JamesMaeding

At a guess, that gal was _not_ an autodesk employee, but working for an outsourced telemarketing firm that gave her a script to run though.  I've gotten several like that over the years, and never had any reason to think it was a real adesk employee on the other end of the line.

Message 7 of 11
JamesMaeding
in reply to: jggerth1

all the more reason to bring it to light.

That is interesting, maybe a new Bently marketing strategy?


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Message 8 of 11
pendean
in reply to: jggerth1

My experience: when a real Autodesk employee initiates contact, they have to date been super-friendly, seeking permission to call by sending an email or letter first, then asking me for best day and time for them to initiate the call. Most also generate a meeting invite after that, and tend to send a same-day reminder to boot just to make sure nothing has changed.

 

Telemarketers have never been so kind, whether they are contracted by Autodesk or Adobe or Amazon or HP or car dealer or anyone else that calls for no reason out of the blue to initiate a sale. As noted above, if they manage to pass the screening from the front/reception, I tend to just quickly terminate the call too.

Message 9 of 11
JamesMaeding
in reply to: pendean

I agree, but she said she was specifically with Autodesk, as I asked if she was working for our reseller.

You have a good point, I should ask for more specific info because I bet the Autodesk people I emailed on this have no clue which cronie called.  I would love nothing more than to alert them to a "spam in their name" caller.

They never denied that they were doing the calling though, just that they were sorry i did not have a good experience.

Heck, I had a great experience, it made me laugh for quite a while.


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Message 10 of 11

Is it possible that Autodesk is seeking to find if users and frequenters of the Forums find Subsription Help a benefit or just an albatross?

Do we expand or curtail the Subscription Center Help offerings?

 

My own answer to a similar question was expand the Forums. I've never had a need to go straight to Autodesk for a solution as the users here offer a great wealth of knowledge.

Okay - Except for the Serial Number SANFU of 2011 but I doubt anyone in the techinical department took care of that.

Message 11 of 11

I would say subscription help is very valuable, so long as you have them escalate the issue properly.

Its not that they know secrets of how to fix deep problems, but they do know how to troubleshoot to eliminate things.

That is pretty valuable for a CAD Manager type.

It used to be harder to get things escalated, but I have had good luck lately.  Unfortunately, the issue I bring up are usually not solved because they are bugs or things Autodesk will not take the time to look into.  There is a limit on what you should expect in terms of investigating your environment.  I'd say they strike a decent balance there.


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