Keys Perspectives

I build software for a living.   I understand the challenges involved with building a software product that really delights users and exceeds their expectations. It is really easy to miss the mark if the people developing something don't really use it.

This reality about the business I am in struck home this week with me being the disappointed customer.  I have been a Skype customer since its very early days.   It is a fabulous technology and provides great value as a service.  When I started Outcome Labs, I decided to use Skype as a key component of my outbound communications infrastructure. On the inbound side, I had shed all my extra numbers and was just using my cell on AT&T.   This was great till I moved and could not get a reliable connection inside my new house (4 bars out on the porch, but nothing inside).  That's another story for another day.

To solve the getting calls problem, I decided to add a Skype inbound number.  I put Google Voice in front so calls would ring on my laptop and cell (if they could) and I could pick which one I wanted to use.  All worked great from a call perspective, but I noticed that SkypeIn did not recognize the person calling even though the correct Caller ID was coming through and the person calling was already in my Skype contact list with that number.

Turns out even through you can have a contact entry in Skype with a Skype ID and multiple phone numbers, the inbound service will only show the "right name" if you create a duplicate contact entry with just the phone number.  This makes a lot more work for the user and "breaks" the very cool "conversation" tracking features of Skype. 

When I asked Skype support, here is the answer I got. 

"Thank you for contacting Skype Support again. We understand your concern about this issue. Thank you for your suggestions! We will definitely look into it and we
do appreciate your feedback. However, implementing changes and creating new features can take some time which means that the suggestions you make today might not be
available in the near future. Please be patient while we are working on improving our service to be better and more user friendly. We hope you enjoy using Skype!"

Given both of these services are pretty mature, it is pretty obvious they are probably not going to address this.  So instead of being a happy customer, I am just a frustrated one taht is exploring other solutions.

Note to self:   make sure you use what you develop!!!

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