If I am looking at any software or service then this is one of the first questions I look to get an answer for, and I look for the following answers:
1) Email and Ticketing:
This is the standard way that most support services operate nowadays and, therefore, it is important to understand how and when your emails will be responded to.
Your property software supplier should have a ticket management system in place for all your software queries to be logged and tracked. You will be able to log into the ticket management system and see the status of your support query at any time.
2) Telephone Support:
It is always important to be able to speak to somebody. Although emailing has become more and more popular there are some people who just want to hear the voice of friendly customer services personnel on the other end of the phone.
So firstly look for a telephone number and make sure that it is not a premium rate telephone number or even worse, a mobile number.
If it is a mobile number then it will mean you are likely to find it difficult to get hold of the sole person providing the support.
If it is a premium rate number then be wary. Is this a sign that the company doesn't want to be contacted and is only interested in making the sale?
Now I do understand that some landlord software businesses are internet based only and don't offer any telephone number at all. If this is the case then I would definitely want to see what their response times are before I departed with any money.
3) On-line chat:
Last but not least we should be able to chat with the company we are looking to buy our landlord software from or have already purchased it from.
Now we use communication technologies such as MSN, Yahoo Messenger or Skype to communicate with our friends and colleagues all over the world so I would also expect to be able to chat to someone on-line.
In short, make sure your property management software supplier offers a good combination of the above after-sales software support services.
