Janet Lee Johnson | The Art of Marketing

As reported yesterday over on Techvibes, Marqui has a new set of owners, an investment group that includes SIL Enterprises, Kystal Financial Corporation, Abraxus Holdings, and Ogilvie Communications.

I found it interesting, in talking with Rob over at Techvibes, that he received three copies of the email notification from three Marqui customers within a couple hours of the morning announcement. The PR agency got around to sending their notice late in the afternoon. I’m sure that was intentional, but really. It just makes the agency look silly.

I think it’s time to admit: staging announcements simply doesn’t work any more. The more we try to orchestrate communication, the more we’re getting in our own way.

Meanwhile, I wish the new owners well. I hope they can take good care of the customers of Marqui, and continue to improve a product that used to make me extremely happy and proud.

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I got an email from a friend the other day who’s a developer on the Marqui platform. It was a letter from Marqui’s VP Client Services, Jackie Reid. In it, she stated:

“….There has been some erroneous information spreading on exactly what is happening at Marqui and this communication is meant to give you information to make appropriate business decisions.

I am happy to report that Marqui is very much running “business as usual”. We have Support, Services and Engineering staff available to service all our customer needs. We are very much here to continue to serve you. Please go to our support portal (http://support.marqui.com) for news on updates, and new training videos. If you haven’t signed up, please do so and you’ll have access to all our great new resources.

We have heard that some of you are being contacted by partners and ex-employees offering support and services. Some of the communication appears to be misleading and encourages you to believe that Marqui will be “disappearing” or there is a risk your website will suddenly cease to exist.

Marqui is currently in a state of “Managed Receivership” and there are currently several parties interested in purchasing the assets and operations of the company with the full intention to continue the business and honour customer commitments. ….”

I am probably one of those Marqui believes guilty of misleading people to worry their website might suddenly cease to exist. As such, I’m duty bound to provide this update.

I hope the chatter around “Managed Receivership” and problems in the customer service area are quickly relegated to the past at Marqui. Meanwhile, I applaud Jackie for her outreach.

I just hope the rest of her team is as proactive as she seems to be as they attempt to stabilize the organization. Providing excellent customer support during any stressful time is the best hope any business has in building value for a potential purchaser… and for a seamless transition once the value has been established.

Go with grace.

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