I thought I could learn a new CRM system in a weekend, it took me three months

When I started my pest control business, I bought into this fancy CRM software that promised to handle everything from scheduling to billing. The sales guy said most people get the hang of it in a couple of days. I figured I'd dedicate last Saturday to it and be done. Nope. The way it linked customer addresses to service zones was weird, and I kept messing up the automated invoice templates. I'd spend an hour just trying to get one client's history to show up right. It wasn't until I actually used it on a real job for Mrs. Henderson over in the Maplewood neighborhood that I started to get it. Now I'm wondering if anyone else has had a tool that just refused to click for way longer than it should have. What did you do to finally get past the learning curve?

3 comments

3 Comments

kim6931mo ago

That "get the hang of it in a couple of days" line is the biggest lie in software. I tried to learn a basic photo editing program once, and I spent a whole afternoon just trying to figure out how to crop a picture without it looking terrible. It finally clicked when I had to fix a bunch of old family photos for my mom.

mila_flores81mo ago

Tell me about it, @kim693. My uncle asked me to help him learn video calls last year and it took three separate weekends just to get him to reliably answer one. The real learning always happens when you have a specific, annoying problem to solve.

wright.lisa25d ago

My neighbor's 78 year old wife learned Zoom in one afternoon because her book club refused to meet without her. The difference was she had a clear reason to learn and a deadline, not just someone showing her features she'd never use. Maybe the trick is getting people to care enough about the outcome before they touch the software.