Mary Kay In Touch Still Has Problems
Written by Parsons Green
May Kay debuted a new version of InTouch, their website for consultants, in December 2023 and a year later it is still having issues.
Mary Kay Director Ellen Bowman Cox had this to say about not being able to find a tracking # on a shipped order.
Various directors chimed in with feedback.
Ellen gets a little testy with Kimberly.
Then thanks everyone for their help.
Daisy then makes a snarky comment to Ellen.
Mary Kay’s bread and butter is inventory purchases from consultants. More and more consultants are having trouble placing those orders every month, which then cuts into their time selling the products and recruiting new consultants. Could Mary Kay be doing this to eventually go affiliate only? In a separate thread, several consultants expressed their concerns.
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I worked in software development for years. You can typically get 80% of the desired function (aka “Happy Path”) with 20% of the total cost. The last 20% of the function (the complex stuff and exception handling) eats up 80% of the total cost. It’s very tempting to just “live with it” rather than spending all that money for such little incremental noticable functional improvement.
It takes an experienced software delivery exec to navigate all of this and prioritize project spending. Every software project I’ve worked on was delivered before it was 100% complete. The stakeholders decide what is “good enough” and then cut funding. In this case, the scope of work was likely poorly defined, and thus they ran out of money and had to call it “good enough” while the system remains a POS. Since they have a captive user audience, they can just push the issues onto the users and the support teams. This is a classic mistake of cutting up-front cost at the expense of recurring costs. But if they don’t have the up-front capital, they have no choice.
They would have been wise to hire an experienced software delivery exec to see this through. At least they would have had a more complete understanding of total cost to decide if they could afford to proceed, or better, prioritize usability over raw function.
It remains possible they will have a “2.0” release coming with more of the remaining function complete. But they may have to save up for this so they don’t have to borrow to make it happen. I doubt they have the money for this.
Given the trend of Mary Kay sales, my guess is they have only a very limited budget for this going forward, and they will be slowly working through the remaining issues. The MK faithful will just have to live with it for now.
It’s a SHOPPING CART! How hard can eCommerce be in 2020s?
Where there is a large legacy user base, and in this case, one full of technophobes, they should have kept the InTouch look and feel and done the improvements under the hood. I’ve seen it done with a medical records app for a multi-national company and the company health centers only noticed the improved speed. But underneath the whole database got refactored
Or do way more user case tests to make sure you know what they needed.
I can’t get past this statement: “We as powerful dynamic Mary Kay leaders are also emotional beings and different things can make us feel sad and anxious and upset.”
Hun, you’re a lowly MLMer scamming people for a buck or two.
Let’s be honest, Mary Kay is heading towards affiliate model. They will be more profitable doing so. Numbers are down. Look at the changes to the car system.
There is what over 30 national retiring and many retiring early? The writing is on the wall! Top people in Beachbody knew affiliate model was coming long before anyone else did. Mary Kay will follow.
The writing will definitely be on the wall if Mary Kay hosts seminar at the Best Western at DFW airport.
Irene Mantione I am over 80 (snip) No wonder we don’t have time to do our business…Selling, finding new customers and above all new Team Members…this should be our FOCUS.
Poor Irene, still desperately looking for another
suckerTeam Member to pad her meagre commissions cheque.At least she was honest: the most important thing is finding new recruits. End of story. And they need the online order system to be fast & easy so they have less time to reconsider.
What a juicy thread! I “closed” my MK business at the end of 2023/beginning of this year. One crazy piece of info – never, since May of 2003 when I started, did I EVER have to change my password. I never changed my password in 20 years! Twenty years of no password changing. TWENTY YEARS they let me keep the same password! Never prompted, never forced to, never had to. That’s insane, and says something about the tech that they did have in place – how secure is it if you never force your people to change their passwords??? p.s. I hate password changing and despise being forced to change my password every 90 days. But, TWENTY YEARS with the same password… is CRAZY!!!
Dear MKers,
Take the hint! MK does not care about you. They just want your money….and you will keep giving it to them like mega church attenders give to their demi gods. Get a clue from Alex for $100. It will be money well spent! What would be interesting to see how many MKers still have original husband and no debt. Lol!