The customer is always right.... [modified]
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I sure never thought I would be fighting that one.... You've all heard me say it, you've all heard me expound on working well with my customers... though you might have heard there is an exception or two.... well, one of those is coming to bite me, and bite me hard. Finished reading the "bug" report after diagnosis by one of team yesterday and it has been bugging me (excuse the pun) ever since. It seems to be coming from a packet containing XYData in that order. Well, we didn't error check for X&Y validity, that definitely is our fault, easily fixed... but wait, the problem is that they are sending XData and the Y position has text in it. We not only have to keep the program from failing (good idea), but we have to try to figure out what the Y they should have sent if they had sent it, should have been so that we can put the data in the right Y spot. :confused: beg your pardon? Now where did I put that tarot simulator... I know I have it here somewhere.... :doh: -- modified at 15:30 Wednesday 22nd August, 2007
_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
I've found that taking the attitude that the customer is *always* right pretty much gurantees at some point you are going to negatively affect all the other customers. The customer is always entitled to their opinion, but sometimes it's just plain silly. Like the guy the other day that emailed us, he put all his microsoft and other certification initials after his name in his email reply to address, normally people put them in a sig at the bottom of their emails which is always without exception a red flag to our tech support people after many years of doing support. He then proceeded to ignore the advice of our tech support person, pointed out that they were wrong and the reason that he wasn't even going to try their proposed troubleshooting course of action was because of all his certifications which he literally pointed out in his email return address and which he said ensured that he quite clearly knew what he was talking about despite the fact that we wrote the software and he had also said in a prior email that he didn't have much experience with IIS which is where the problem mis-configuration was. My advice to everyone is do not put a reference to your certifications or degrees anywhere in your email unless it's directly about them because most companies will red flag you because of all the others they had to deal with in the past.
"I don't want more choice. I just want better things!" - Edina Monsoon
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I've found that taking the attitude that the customer is *always* right pretty much gurantees at some point you are going to negatively affect all the other customers. The customer is always entitled to their opinion, but sometimes it's just plain silly. Like the guy the other day that emailed us, he put all his microsoft and other certification initials after his name in his email reply to address, normally people put them in a sig at the bottom of their emails which is always without exception a red flag to our tech support people after many years of doing support. He then proceeded to ignore the advice of our tech support person, pointed out that they were wrong and the reason that he wasn't even going to try their proposed troubleshooting course of action was because of all his certifications which he literally pointed out in his email return address and which he said ensured that he quite clearly knew what he was talking about despite the fact that we wrote the software and he had also said in a prior email that he didn't have much experience with IIS which is where the problem mis-configuration was. My advice to everyone is do not put a reference to your certifications or degrees anywhere in your email unless it's directly about them because most companies will red flag you because of all the others they had to deal with in the past.
"I don't want more choice. I just want better things!" - Edina Monsoon
John Cardinal wrote:
The customer is always entitled to their opinion, but sometimes it's just plain silly.
I sometimes forget that just because half our customers are rocket scientists, doesn't guarentee equal volumes of common sense.... Next time I forget, kick me. :doh:
_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
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I've found that taking the attitude that the customer is *always* right pretty much gurantees at some point you are going to negatively affect all the other customers. The customer is always entitled to their opinion, but sometimes it's just plain silly. Like the guy the other day that emailed us, he put all his microsoft and other certification initials after his name in his email reply to address, normally people put them in a sig at the bottom of their emails which is always without exception a red flag to our tech support people after many years of doing support. He then proceeded to ignore the advice of our tech support person, pointed out that they were wrong and the reason that he wasn't even going to try their proposed troubleshooting course of action was because of all his certifications which he literally pointed out in his email return address and which he said ensured that he quite clearly knew what he was talking about despite the fact that we wrote the software and he had also said in a prior email that he didn't have much experience with IIS which is where the problem mis-configuration was. My advice to everyone is do not put a reference to your certifications or degrees anywhere in your email unless it's directly about them because most companies will red flag you because of all the others they had to deal with in the past.
"I don't want more choice. I just want better things!" - Edina Monsoon
A friend of mine took a tech support call from 6 MCSEs that couldn't figure out that they had the keyboard and mouse in the wrong sockets. I took a call once from a NASA engineer that was complaining that the signal from the processor to the parallel port on his new Dell pentium system took longer then the signal from his 486 to the parallel port. :doh:
This blanket smells like ham
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Damn. I google for a Dilbert Tarot deck for you and sure enough, there WAS one, but it's been removed from the web due to lawyers and their noises. :(( Marc
Scott may have not joined the Dark Side™, but his marketeers sure swing that way.
Software Zen:
delete this; -
I sure never thought I would be fighting that one.... You've all heard me say it, you've all heard me expound on working well with my customers... though you might have heard there is an exception or two.... well, one of those is coming to bite me, and bite me hard. Finished reading the "bug" report after diagnosis by one of team yesterday and it has been bugging me (excuse the pun) ever since. It seems to be coming from a packet containing XYData in that order. Well, we didn't error check for X&Y validity, that definitely is our fault, easily fixed... but wait, the problem is that they are sending XData and the Y position has text in it. We not only have to keep the program from failing (good idea), but we have to try to figure out what the Y they should have sent if they had sent it, should have been so that we can put the data in the right Y spot. :confused: beg your pardon? Now where did I put that tarot simulator... I know I have it here somewhere.... :doh: -- modified at 15:30 Wednesday 22nd August, 2007
_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
I feel with you here. It took me a long time to figure out that a customer is not an infallible blessing of a human being. These days, I try to apply the pareto principle to my customers and heap my attention on my best customers.
My Blog A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. - -Lazarus Long
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I've found that taking the attitude that the customer is *always* right pretty much gurantees at some point you are going to negatively affect all the other customers. The customer is always entitled to their opinion, but sometimes it's just plain silly. Like the guy the other day that emailed us, he put all his microsoft and other certification initials after his name in his email reply to address, normally people put them in a sig at the bottom of their emails which is always without exception a red flag to our tech support people after many years of doing support. He then proceeded to ignore the advice of our tech support person, pointed out that they were wrong and the reason that he wasn't even going to try their proposed troubleshooting course of action was because of all his certifications which he literally pointed out in his email return address and which he said ensured that he quite clearly knew what he was talking about despite the fact that we wrote the software and he had also said in a prior email that he didn't have much experience with IIS which is where the problem mis-configuration was. My advice to everyone is do not put a reference to your certifications or degrees anywhere in your email unless it's directly about them because most companies will red flag you because of all the others they had to deal with in the past.
"I don't want more choice. I just want better things!" - Edina Monsoon
John Cardinal wrote:
The customer is always entitled to their opinion, but sometimes it's just plain silly.
Two edged sword really as it can go either way. We subscribe to certain services and the provider is supposed to put out data files on ftp server for us to pick up every day in the morning. Our own programs that kick off depend on the fact that new data is available every day, if we don't receive new data, we notice it. Shortly after day time savings switch we noticed that we were not getting new data like we were supposed to. We call them, ask if anything is wrong, they say nothing is wrong, we check the time stamp on the file which points to the possibility that the file was uploaded one hour late due to their unix server still being on the old time (there was a question whether the time stamp was file created, file modified or file uploaded though, but still it was a valid possibility). They still say nothing is wrong. So on continues for two days. Next one of the developers stays overnight and watches ftp himself, sure enough, the file gets uploaded one hour late. We report back, they still insist nothing is wrong.... WTF? Next we log in into ftp server, create directory (the only way we could check system time), the time stamp is one hour off. Finally that convinces them to take action. It took nearly one week of constant nagging them to finally check time on the server and fix it...
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John Cardinal wrote:
The customer is always entitled to their opinion, but sometimes it's just plain silly.
I sometimes forget that just because half our customers are rocket scientists, doesn't guarentee equal volumes of common sense.... Next time I forget, kick me. :doh:
_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
El Corazon wrote:
equal volumes of common sense
The problem with common sense is that it's not that common!!
------------------------------------------- Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow; Don't walk behind me, I may not lead; Just bugger off and leave me alone!!
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John Cardinal wrote:
The customer is always entitled to their opinion, but sometimes it's just plain silly.
Two edged sword really as it can go either way. We subscribe to certain services and the provider is supposed to put out data files on ftp server for us to pick up every day in the morning. Our own programs that kick off depend on the fact that new data is available every day, if we don't receive new data, we notice it. Shortly after day time savings switch we noticed that we were not getting new data like we were supposed to. We call them, ask if anything is wrong, they say nothing is wrong, we check the time stamp on the file which points to the possibility that the file was uploaded one hour late due to their unix server still being on the old time (there was a question whether the time stamp was file created, file modified or file uploaded though, but still it was a valid possibility). They still say nothing is wrong. So on continues for two days. Next one of the developers stays overnight and watches ftp himself, sure enough, the file gets uploaded one hour late. We report back, they still insist nothing is wrong.... WTF? Next we log in into ftp server, create directory (the only way we could check system time), the time stamp is one hour off. Finally that convinces them to take action. It took nearly one week of constant nagging them to finally check time on the server and fix it...
Sure the customer is sometimes right, but I could tell you a thousand stories or more about the weird shit that has come across our tech support mail, or that I personally experienced working in retail for a while.
"I don't want more choice. I just want better things!" - Edina Monsoon
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I feel with you here. It took me a long time to figure out that a customer is not an infallible blessing of a human being. These days, I try to apply the pareto principle to my customers and heap my attention on my best customers.
My Blog A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. - -Lazarus Long
Chris Austin wrote:
pareto principle
Ahh yes the good old 80/20 rule. It's absolutely true for a software company in that 80% of your tech support time is spect with 20% of your customers, robbing the other 80% of time you could have spent developing new features etc. With a product as mature as ours where we've taken literally years and painstaking effort to change our manual, software etc every time we get a tech support request that shows that something we are doing could be clearer or done better, we are pretty much at the point where every email we get is a question that's answered clearly in our faq or manual etc. It's a typical pattern with software: when you first release it every email you get is a valuable resource giving you ideas and knowledge about what needs to be changed, as time goes by you get more and more people who are not willing to read even one sentence in an abbreviated installation guide or follow the simplest of directions and it gives you a feeling that all your customers are that way and you have to keep telling yourself that the vast majority never email, never have a question etc and that what you are dealing with day to day are the 20% that will never go away no matter how simple or easy you make things.
"I don't want more choice. I just want better things!" - Edina Monsoon
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John Cardinal wrote:
The customer is always entitled to their opinion, but sometimes it's just plain silly.
Two edged sword really as it can go either way. We subscribe to certain services and the provider is supposed to put out data files on ftp server for us to pick up every day in the morning. Our own programs that kick off depend on the fact that new data is available every day, if we don't receive new data, we notice it. Shortly after day time savings switch we noticed that we were not getting new data like we were supposed to. We call them, ask if anything is wrong, they say nothing is wrong, we check the time stamp on the file which points to the possibility that the file was uploaded one hour late due to their unix server still being on the old time (there was a question whether the time stamp was file created, file modified or file uploaded though, but still it was a valid possibility). They still say nothing is wrong. So on continues for two days. Next one of the developers stays overnight and watches ftp himself, sure enough, the file gets uploaded one hour late. We report back, they still insist nothing is wrong.... WTF? Next we log in into ftp server, create directory (the only way we could check system time), the time stamp is one hour off. Finally that convinces them to take action. It took nearly one week of constant nagging them to finally check time on the server and fix it...
you think thats bad? I work for an IT/Finance company for the summer months(im in college) and sum of the crap we get here, our interface with one of the banks was down for 2 nights, on the first we got in touch and they said nothin was wrong, and the same every hour for 2 days....then finally one comes back and says oh sorry yeh we had a problem..sumone tripped over the cable......wat sort of a bank has cables left lying about in server rooms??? and thats not to mention the staff in this place the amount of requets we get to pretty much do peoples jobs for them and then IT they can even upgrade a SAN server right.....:(( mikie