Yep, tech support is one of the most irritating issues that agents deal with when using real estate contact management software. I mean I have been teaching real estate agents how to use the technology we have today for a long time. So long you can date it back to the DOS days and when the only type of mobile phone available was either a “car phone” or the bulky ones you would see on tv shows like Magnum P.I. While I’m giving away my age here, I was blessed with the opportunity to work with the company who introduced laptops to real estate companies around the nation. Keep in mind though, back then they weighed a good 10lbs and were kind of awkward to carry. It’s funny but their hard drives were smaller than an iPod Nano uses today. The point is that everything changes, especially when it comes to Real Estate Contact Management software.

However, it’s the tech support that seems to have withstood the tests of time and the individuals there aren’t any better. Did you know that everytime you have a problem with your Real Estate CRM program the technical support people usually have no idea how to resolve your issues? I have two slides in my PowerPoint presentation that talks about all the irritating things technical support people say and ask. The titles are: “Do you have a brick or a sledgehammer handy?” and “Please hold for Mr. Gate’s attorney.” I have several others, but we’ll save those for the live seminars in your area.

I would venture to say that all the technical support people who cover Real Estate Contact Management software have never sold real estate. So basically when you call up tech support with an issue or question, you yourself have to go through a series of questions so they can stall while they look for the answer. What they are trained to do is help you with the occasional “error” messages. When you purchase Top Producer or AgentOffice this is the biggest complaint amongst consumers. We can all attest to waiting online for possibly an hour or longer, getting asked questions that really make no sense, and basically wasting time with these people. Then, after all your patience they tell you; “Well, doesn’t seem like there is anything wrong with your software.” Huh, really? One of my attendees even said his tech support said; “Maybe you shouldn’t try to use it to do mail merges.”

Sadly, the problem all along was not with the software. You didn’t have a “technical” issue; you had an “educational” issue. It turns out you were trying to prepare a form letter from the wrong part of the program or you were skipping a simple step that was telling the software to print “to the contact” not “to the group.” Even more sad is the fact that most tech support people don’t want to admit that they don’t know all the steps to preparing a mail merge and they do their best to make you feel like the idiot while they get on to the next waiting victim.

Then of course you can’t forget about the cost attached to inferior technical support. Top Producer says their tech support is free, but you actually pay $39 a month for the program. AgentOffice gives you a month free when you purchase their software, but if something goes wrong you have to pay $295 for a year long support contract. Heck, this is the same price as purchasing the program!

The good news is that you can save yourself a lot of technical frustration and expense by getting trained on whichever program you decide to purchase. It’s sort of like a good health strategy: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Get good training and you’ll never have to hear this from a tech support person again, “We can fix this, but you’re going to need a knife, a roll of duct tape and a car battery.

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