Nobody who designed your CRM has answered a ringing phone

Two rooms

In one room, people write tickets about latency. In the other, a phone rings while a client is waiting, a crew is idle on site and a second line is already blinking. We spent years in the second room: installers first, then our own company doing CCTV, fire alarm, access control, smart home and cabling, on private houses, plants and shopping centres. Hiring, ads, procurement, logistics, drawings, permits. All of it by hand. The rest of us ran processing and manufacturing, where every lost hour shows up on the production line.

What the phone actually sounds like

It rings at 08:50 when nobody has arrived. It rings during lunch. It rings while your best person is on a roof with a drill, which means answering it costs money and not answering it costs more.

If your product has never made someone late for lunch, you don't know what it does.

Features that only work in a demo

Dashboards nobody opens. Four-step approval flows for a company of nine. A mobile app that assumes coverage in the basement of a building under construction. Every one of those was a good idea in a meeting room.

The Monday test

• Can a new hire use it without training on Monday morning?

• Does it survive a foreman typing with one finger in a cold van?

• Does it work when everyone is busy, which is the only time it matters?

Who should be in the room

Someone who has taken the call. We listen to the recordings, then change the product. That is the entire method.