Robert on Software Development

The Importance of Being Ernest (in Service)

How many times have you heard the expression, “the customer is always right?” I’ve been giving this a lot of thought lately as I work very closely with my customer and make daily decisions that affect them.

On the one hand, there’s the issue of what the customer really wants and believes they need for their business. This can be driven by any number of factors, including political and financial (the two biggest). And on the other hand, there’s the issue of what level of service you can provide to the customer, most commonly impacted by financial drivers, commitments made, and the overall attitude of the customer involved.

All of that is to say that from the customer’s perspective, they’re paying for your service and should get what they want. From the provider’s perspective, there are limits as to what can be done and expectations need to be managed up front.

Unfortunately, no level of preparation can cover the odd and occasional problem. Service level agreements are fantastic for managing expectations, but when a server goes down the customer finds little comfort in the documentation outlining an agreement.

With this topic in mind, I found two very interesting blog posts today that provide different perspectives on the customer-provider relationship. The first, from Eric Lippert, is entitled “Customer Service is Not Rocket Science, Part Two.” Eric had an unfortunate experience with a bigoted lawn care provider and details his experience trying to get the middleman who set up the service to capitulate.

The other post is a reprint of an email Bill Gates sent regarding Windows usability. This is a very curious email because Bill Gates is both a provider (Microsoft) and a customer (user of Microsoft products), and as much as he’d like to, he’s not able to get involved at every stage of every product. So he’s a user just like us.

It is only with experience that we figure out how to best react to our customer’s demands.