When we ask companies to do a review with us, sometimes they decline. Or at other times they don’t supply some of the information we’re hoping to get from them.
It’s important to remember that while our reviews are an opportunity for these companies to showcase the kind of value they offer to the mental health community, these reviews can also make a company feel vulnerable. We are asking them to trust that we won’t misrepresent them or accidentally make them look undesirable to you, their potential customers.
Many of these companies work hard, and conscientiously, to make good services that help you help others. If some of them decline to engage in our review process, it’s something we need to respect.
So to sum it up, here are some reasons why a company might decline to engage in our review process or might choose not to answer all our questions:
- The review process is a vulnerable one. We haven’t been able to earn their trust enough to make them feel safe doing it.
- They are just plain too busy to answer all our questions. Running a service company requires a lot of work whether you’re pulling in a profit or not (and sometimes they aren’t.) Working with us to do a review may involve extra tasks they don’t have time for, especially if we haven’t managed to convince them that it will return value to them later. This is especially true for big products with a lot of features, like practice management systems.
- We can’t get in touch with the right person. This seems to happen with bigger companies. Often the only contact information we can find is for sales and support people. Those people may try to get us in contact with higher-ups but they can’t manage to get any answers. Or they may never respond to us at all. With big companies, the usual channels for making initial contact sometimes aren’t prepared to deal with our requests.
- They know they have security or privacy issues and don’t want to expose them. This could also be the reason. But in all honesty, it’s not the right thing to assume without specific evidence. Most companies are doing honest work to make an honest product, and rarely is this the reason why they might decline to engage in our reviews.