There are many blogs which discuss about their professions or jobs that related with their experiences with the customers. I just figured out that most of the technical blogs are more to provide technical advice or their new discoveries in their job scope compared with their experiences in facing some customers or typical users that can be very funny or weird which they don’t even imagine that they will face such person in their life.

What I had discovered for the entire week? If you had read my previous posts, there are several new discoveries for me in technical area for this week. At the same time, I experienced some users that I have no idea to categorize them as weird, funny or smart and I planned to blog more about my experiences and my interactions with the customers in the future.

Most of the people around me always complaining to me how stupid the customers can be and they will start telling me the story that are happening between them and the customers. Whenever anyone starts their stories with the title “Customers are stupid” or “The users are stupid” before proceed to the further descriptions, there is a question mark appears in my mind whether the customers are really stupid? Sometimes, I wish to be straightforward and tell them that if they feel the customers are stupid, in fact, they should more appreciate the customers because without their stupidities, you will lose your current job. What if you are working in sales line? If the customers are stupid, does it sounds a bit contradict when you had successfully sold the products to them, and you are complaining that they are stupid (stupid in purchasing your product?) or the way you present your product causes them more confused and stupid? I’m not sure who is more stupid in this situation.

Well, I personally never categorize any customers as “stupid” based on several reasons:-

1. We are customers too. Are you so sure that you are smart and know well enough in all the products that you are using right now without any brief introduction or any research before using it?
2. More questions are actually leading to higher chances of a successful transaction. If they are not interested in your product, why they are wasting so much time to throw you with more questions? More confusion from the customers increasing the security of your job and the importance of you in your current job.
3. Thirdly, I feel categorize anyone as “stupid” sounds harsh or rude for me.

These two weeks, I experienced two customers that are quite interesting for me to share it here.

Customer #1
There is a customer was raising a support issue and asking whether a particular feature can be done in the system. Unfortunately, that feature does not implemented in the system yet but I told him to share his opinions in the feature request to increase the chances of this feature to be implemented in the shortest time. He appreciated a lot with the provided suggestion but he can’t login to the site to do so. I need to get a further confirmation whether he has login to that site as raising a support issue is different from the site of improvement implementations.

When he came back to me in the next reply, he was so sure that he has login to the site and provided me with two screenshots. The first screenshot shows the Microsoft Paint that edits the screenshot of the appearance of his username at the top of the site to prove that he has login to the site. The second screenshot shows the contents of the feature request with the ‘Log In’ link at the top of the site and also the message on the left panel that advising the user to login to the site if the user wish to perform more operations.

Although I felt a bit surprised with his reply as this situation never happens to me before this but I already knew his current problem and also his confusion. Based from the screenshots, it’s more than enough to indicate that he is confused that both are different sites. I should admit as it seems this is more to my carelessness of just providing the direct link without specifically telling him that both are different sites due to the wrong perception that most of the customers already knew about the differences.

So, I made a clear explanation that both of them are different sites and requested him to try to login to the site whether it works for him. He appreciated my help and told me that he didn’t noticed that he actually login to the support site without logging in to another site through the provided link that directs to another site.

Customer #2
There was a customer raising a support issue last few weeks which is regarding on how to fix a particular function that no longer working anymore. Furthermore, he is from one of a well-known financial firm. Why I need to specify “financial firm”? I seldom have the curiosity to know where the customers from when handling support cases unless they are really make your life into a hard way or any obvious attitudes problem.

I requested all the necessary information to replicate the problem but unfortunately, I can’t find the solution to fix the problem or found any past support cases related to this and even my colleague can’t figure out the root cause. I suggested to him some workarounds that he can try whether the problem still persists. However, he told me that he already tried the workaround before raising the support issue and his motive in raising this out is to check the root cause of the problem as it is affecting the business. He is not expecting an immediate response but wishes to have a “fruitful” solution for this problem and left a last line:
“Your innovative and precise views are highly appreciated.”

What I wish to reply to him is the following comment:

Hi,
I’m so sorry to tell you that you had totally ruined up your current application. Can you try to deploy a new one and I’m pretty sure this will really resolve the current problem as this is totally free from your innovative customization. This is the most “fruitful” and my most precise view to fix this problem.

By the way, do you interested in joining our support team? I figured out that there is a potential in you in customization and configuration area. Besides that, you know what you should do and had tried all the workaround when you are facing this problem instead of directly raising a support issue. Hope you will consider about the offer.

Finally, just to let you know although we help customers to fix their problems and any errors that they found suspicious appear in the log, however, we do not fix for any messes that you had done in the system. We will provide the best solution to fix the problem but we are not responsible to clean up your mess that you had done to your system.

Hope you will understand our level of intelligence and our job scope as well.

Regards,

Personally, I feel the attitude of every individual customer is more important. Sometimes, I’m wondering whether any colleges or universities in the world offering any courses called ‘Customer Psychology’ or ‘User Psychology’ in IT area so that the students can understand more about what the customers actually want and how they think, as quite similar on how important for the lawyers learning ‘Criminal Psychology’ and staff in education field learning ‘Child Psychology’. I’m getting more interested to know the pattern of their requirements and thinking to share it out more in the blog.

Anyway, I just read an interesting article related in satisfying IT customers and I certainly feel it has been well-written and it seems quite true in what he had discussed in the article. Feel free to have a read in this:

Satisfying IT customers may be a bad idea