I already know that if I have to inquire about the price or ask for a login that the service is going to be some antiquated 90's bs.

But occasionally I experience this for something I didn't expect, like cloud computing.

I encountered a cloud service that had obscure hardware I was looking for, and unlike Amazon, Google, Azure, DigitalOcean etc this service needed for you to email them to get signed up!

"Thank you for your interest! Where are you located and what does your work involve?"

Okay "Sales Engineers", why is that relevant. Why is a human even answering this email?

"I'm experimenting with deployments but latency isn't a big issue for me so any data center will be fine". You know, like you would say with Amazon, except in a dropdown.

I jump through the hoops. Finally, I get to see what the interface is like, I'm poking around with no surprise that graphic design is an afterthought when suddenly

You've got mail!

My email client doesn't say that but his probably does.

"I wanted to do a quick check-in and.."

Aw that's nice and I also would have been totally fine contacting support whenever I got around to it!

I checked out the interface, got my fill, decided it wasn't for me and moved on!

All in all in one week it took:

10 emails to get signed up

1 email to tell me that "the system" should send me an email about my new account login

2 emails to get the account login and confirmation

4 emails to troubleshoot the broken account login system

1 automated onboarding email

3 checkin emails

1 automated 1 week anniversary onboarding email

What's the way to tell people I want a self serve option? Reducing this email chain down to 3 emails. Why is that person employed? This was during the best market in the history of mankind and I was questioning that, and now everyone with a talent more relevant than customer "retention" should be just as annoyed, given how coveted a continual flow of oxygen is now. xx

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Ask HN: How do you tell SaaS sales people you want a self-serve option?

Ask HN: How do you tell SaaS sales people you want a self-serve option?