Microsoft Convergence Attendance – Hard Dollar ROI Justification
There is a killer no brainer justification method to justify your trip to Convergence 2012. While there are, a multitude of tangible and intangible reasons to attend the Microsoft Convergence Annual Conference the one I have used over the years is FREE Technical Support Incidents. Presuming no change from years past you can initiate no charge technical support incidents with the CRM Team at Convergence.
What we do is to save up all non-emergency technical support inquiries from our clients that we haven’t been able to quickly debug on our own. Yes, that happens even after working with the product since 2003. We then bring our collection of incidents to the event – customer details, screen shots, troubleshooting logs (on USB sticks). At Convergence, we set aside time early in the week and head down to the networking area where technical support has a booth. So not only do we get to speak in person with the technical support personnel; we get to meet many of the people that we have worked with during the year on support incidents and get introduced to new team members.
If they cannot help you solve the incident while at the show, they will walk you over to pedestal where a support incident will be assigned to the case that they will follow-up with after the show.
How much is this worth to us? At least $260 per incident plus the fact that we get to meet the great team members who support the CRM product.
PS You do not have to be a partner to get the free support – it works for end users also. In addition, even if you are using CRM Online, which comes with support, there is not anything better than having that in-person face-to-face communication.
