Customer Service makes the difference

Tonight, the family ordered dinner out from a small local restaurant. My wife ordered the meal and I picked up the dinner on the way home from work. Arriving at the busy restaurant, I was asked to confirm my order, but I didn't know what was ordered. I answered yes and took the food home. The order was wrong. Not only was it wrong but the meal they sent me home with was linguine and clams and my wife is deathly allergic to clams. So, she called them and explained that they made a mistake. The restaurant decided to send a staff member with the correct entrée to my door. They included a dessert and an apology. On a busy Friday night, this restaurant was willing to be without a staff member for about half hour to remedy my situation. Of course, I will order from this restaurant again and do one better, I will recommend them to everyone. This is the benefit of great customer service.


As a multitude of players enter the SaaS marketplace, leaders will emerge. You have many choices when you wish to dine out. After deciding whether you want Italian or Japanese, you will make your decision on based on price, quality, and customer service. Successful cloud companies will offer the triple threat, price, performance, and excellent customer service. Without being a leader in all three categories, SaaS and PaaS providers will fail. Fifty percent of all new restaurants fail within the first two years. They fail due to loosing out to the competition on at least one of the three factors. I predict new cloud companies (and established companies entering the cloud marketplace) will experience a similar fifty percent failure rate when they fail to take the lead on price, performance, and customer service.