OK, I long ago gave up on getting all 3 in one product.
But it seems more and more that you can’t get two of those characteristics together anymore.
But in point of fact, they treat their customers great. That’s why the customers keep going back.
Everyone’s heard horror stories about Wal-Mart, but in fact the level of customer satisfaction they generate is excellent. I know we keep going back to Wal-Mart because it’s simply a great service; lots of different products in one clean store. They’re all laid out the same, so the stuff is easy to find, and the prices are great. They always have shopping carts with baby seats available. If you asked 100 Wal-Mart customers what they thought of the store and demanded an honest answer, 99 would have to admit it’s a pretty good shopping experience, when you combine price, convenience, selection and service.
Customer satisfaction =! a lack of complaints.
Many companies have realized that it makes sense to “tier” your customers. There are the Level A customers who you bend over backwards for. They are the “we come here all the time and spend a lot of money in this place” types. You want to keep them happy at all costs
Your Level B customers are your regular run of the mill customers. Average spending and require average level of maintenance.
Level C, you don’t even want as customers. These are the people who don’t spend very much but make the most demands of your people. It actually costs you more to keep these customers than they bring you in revenue.
What I’ve found it IT services companies is that most people know jack shit about running a business. They tend to have a model of do any job the customer asks and do whatever it takes to get the job done. That’s why they tend to be small, employ kids in their 20s, have high turnover rates and not pay very well compared to lawyers or investment bankers and other professions that require 80+ hour weeks. Most of these companies don’t “manage” anything. They approach every project like jr league soccer or basketball game - every kid chases the ball instead of playing a position.
“Bend overs” are not a dying breed but they are a short-lived or sickly animal. Their employees either burn out and quit or eventually service suffers and customers pull out leaving a shell of a company. But sometimes these companies can limp along for 10 years never growing bigger than say 100 people or so.
I, on the otherhand won’t go to wal-mart because the people who work there don’t know crap about the products they sell, they carry cheap merchandise that doesn’t last and the atmosphere is terrible. The reason people go back is for the price - its what they can more easily afford - not because of some awesome customer service. A simple satisfaction survey of wal-mart customers won’t tell you the whole story. You need to include income and also non-wal-mart customers.
And back on topic - he was bringing it up as a counter to my point of happy employees generally make happy customers - Wal-mart doesn’t really touch it in any shape.
Of course, the 100%-at-moderate-stress firm is largely hypothetical. What project or product ever manages to deliver at 100% in the real world? And how many clients, except the most unreasonable, refuse to engage in any give-and-take whatsoever?
Also, some minimal degree of stress is a factor in any workplace. It comes from taking a diverse group of workers and causing them to cooperate, stay on task and solve problems. It’s how well the workplace deals with that stress that makes it a good place to work (or not).
I see an unspoken assumption that not dealing with stress when it occurs will somehow put that 100% delivery rate closer in reach. If that’s what you believe, I’m glad I don’t work for you.
Well, let’s look at a realistic example.
“Hi, Mr. Lab Director. You’re calling about that new specimen processing and labeling system we sold you? You say that only 90% of the specimens are handled properly? That the bar codes aren’t read on 10% of the specimens, and your personnel have to go back and identify and label them by hand? Physicians are complaining because 10% of the lab results are delayed, and they can’t treat or discharge patients on schedule?
We’d love to give you a quick fix, but that would stress out our employees. We expect to have a software upgrade in three months though. Hope that helps!”
You have to wonder how many respondents in this thread are actually involved in running a business, as opposed to employees resentful because the company doesn’t revolve around them.
Incidentally, the “bend over for the customer” model is far outpaced by the “bend over for the top executives/investors” model. The bottom line is still profits, not happy happy employees.
How about we stop arguing at the ridiculous extremes and agree that there’s a middle ground. If you keep your employees challenged and happy while efficiently responding to customers’ needs, you’ll be successful (in general). All of this ‘pissed off that the company doesn’t revolve around them’ crap is nonsense. Employees just want to be appreciated and rewarded for good work. Customers just want to be treated fairly and recieve a solid, dependable product.
Starbucks actually treats their employees quite well.
So does QuikTrip! That was my point! It was sarcasm!
You should take a look at one of the many WalMart threads - doesn’t look like great customer satisfaction to me. The WalMart near me is dirty and a total mess - and it’s located in Silicon Valley, not exactly a bad neighborhood. I suspect customers who have been convinced that they can’t afford Target (whether this is true or not) might consider WalMart great. No matter what their ads say, a company that tends to lock its employees inside at night can do better at employee satisfaction.
I gather you have never been anywhere near a software development project, or you wouldn’t conflate producing 90% of what was in the specs on time with good quality with a repetitive operation like in your example. 90% id damn good - I bet the FBI would have loved 50% on time.
And for the fifth time or so, even putting employee satisfaction first (or equal) does not imply telling customers to go jump in the lake. I don’t know how an employee could be happy with customers yelling at him all the time.
Not just service companies. Case in point - I was evaluating expensive software packages, one from a company with great technology that was trying to sell intenal tools outside. At a meeting they proudly said that if a customer had a problem, he could call a developer directly to get it fixed.
Bad move. I used to run a group doing a similar internally developed tool, and that way leads to chaos. Responding to different requests leads to inconsistent software, and a disaster. As a customer, I’d rather have the company take my request, (if not an emergency) integrate it with others, and produce a high quality update. Fact is, if a supplier kisses enough customer asses, he’s going to wind up with a brown mouth. :eek: 
There seems to be a conclusion among some software developers that their business is different, or even unique when it comes to satisfying customers. I’m reminded of what we were constantly being told during the boom of the '90s, that the stock market was now immune to crashing and would go on expanding indefinitely, since the high tech paradigm had changed everything.
Oops.
I have been only peripherally involved with software development as if affects me, a user. The odds of my being directly involved with software development are decreasing, as it increasingly seems to be shifting overseas. There are hints in this thread as to one of the reasons why this is so.
And that has what to do with the point? The problem in the '90s had nothing to do with software development or software quality, and everything with unrealistic business models.
Software development issues are not exactly new - Brooks talked about them from S/360 development over 40 years ago, and I learned about them in college over 30 years ago. Large hardware development projects, like microprocessors, have similar problems.
But my point is that there is a big difference in measuring and ensuring quality for a one-off project like in the OP, and manufacturing or process like things for which statistical methods can be used to measure quality. I’ve taken several six sigma like classes, but they don’t pretend to apply to software development.
Uh, no. That developers overseas work for a lot less is the reason. I’ve not seen any evidence that overseas quality is better than US quality in general.
There are two ways in which software can not meet customer requirements. The first is that it can not meet the customer’s written or implied specs. The second is that the software meets the specs, but is buggy. My take on the OP (Bob - you there?) is that his first company delivered unbuggy software on time, without meeting all the specs (and I’d hope this was negotiated with the customer ahead of time) while treating employees well, while his second company always delivers all the specs on time, while overworking employees and not caring about quality.
Forcing overtime in the long run is not just bad for employees, it’s bad for business and quality. A paper (which I consider a classic) showed that by the time you get to about 10 hours of overtime a week in the long run you are getting no productive work for the time, since the number of errors made and the time to fix them do to tiredness wipes out the 10 hours. I have seen this quite directly - though it didn’t cost the company any money, directly, since we were all on salary.
The point you’re missing is that companies that consider themselves exempt from normal business rules and expectations (apparently including some current software developers) can expect unpleasant surprises, much like the ones that befell high-tech firms in the '90s.
Another point missed. If you have trouble competing on price, might it be wise to concentrate extra hard on meeting customer needs, instead of insisting that “we are past the kiss the customer’s ass era”?
I was involved in manufacturing back when we did it in this country. I remember a message from G.M. telling us they had just finished a study which showed a direct corelation between work schedules and quality. The study determined quality and amount of work performed on a 8 hr schedule. It showed from 8 to 10 hours the work sufferered in both quantity and quality. Not just a little either. Then from 10 to 12 hours the work dropped precitiously. It wqas a waste to work more than a 10 hr schedule.
They then scheduled us for 12 hra a day 7 days a week. The explanation was that our project was too big to finish on time. But when it was over they had to explain why. They could say they did all they could do.They would have no answer when the big shot would ask why we didnt work more hours.
About the quality. When the Indian, and Japanese and Other foreign countries were being trained,they came here. We had to train them If we didnt we would lose our unemployment benefits and retirement. They kept a crew to supervise and train them.And to fix what was wrong. It was and is clearly about money. Loyalty is a one way street in business.
Exactly who is considering themselves exempt from normal business rules? And which normal business rules are you referring to? Trying to get a solid set of specs from a customer or set of customers who doesn’t really know what he wants, but knows it when he sees it, is not quite the same as deciding whether the customer wants a Big Mac or a quarter pounder. I’d suspect both companies in the OP had a specification process - but this doesn’t always work. Some development methodologies involve giving customers little bits of a product, in the realization that when he sees it he’ll realize that what he said he wanted isn’t what he really wanted.
It is very hard to concentrate hard on customer needs from 10,000 miles and 12 time zones away. As far as quality, in the sense of bugs per lines of code, I haven’t seen any data showing Indians are better than Americans (who might be Indian anyhow.) There is quite a bit of turnover there, so it might be worse.
As for specs, the successful model I have seen involves the management, sales team, and software designers being in the US, close to the customers. They understand the market and define the product, and send it to India to be coded. (The founders of this company are Indian, which helps.) I’ve seen chunks of code in a bigger project sent there also. What doesn’t work is trying to do the specification development at this distance - there is a large amount of feedback required, and it is unlikely to happen there.
Thanks! That’s interesting data. Before I left one company, I shifted from an 8 am - 9 pm schedule (the macho thing for any manager or engineer hoping to get a raise to do) to an 8 am - 6:30 pm schedule (since I didn’t care anymore.) I discovered I actually got more done. I know a guy who worked for me spent a lot of his “overtime” planning his honeymoon, and I couldn’t blame him. It’s not like he was getting paid for the extra time, after all.
This is a good time for me to trot out my Army story again.
A few years ago I was in the Canadian Army, and I was on the Combat Leader’s Course. The CLC is as hard a course as the army offers. It was harder than basic. Super, super tough, super high stress.
Anyway, a week and a half in we were getting maybe an hour and a half of sleep a night. Every night we were up 'til 3:30 or 4 trying to get everything done, and we still diden’t get it all done. After a week of this the sleep deprivation was bad enough that a few people actually got hurt by accident.
So this one night I’m on duty in the “platoon room,” e.g. I’m the guy selling snacks and pop. Me and a few other folks are in there polishing boots. The course captain comes by, doing the officer-among-the-men thing. “So Corporal Jay,” he asks, “How’s it going?”
“Well sir, if you want an honest response, it’s not going so well.”
“Oh,” he asks, “why is that?” I explain to him about the fact that we’re up until 3 every night and getting no sleep.
“Well,” he says, “I think I have a solution for you. From now on, whatever you’re doing at 10:30, put it away, and go to bed.”
I was flabbergasted. “Sir,” I say, “I don’t think you understand -”
“No, Corporal,” he says, “It’s you who does not understand. Just trust me. Go to bed at 10:30 every night, no matter what.”
So I figure, what the hell, I’ll give it a try. That night I hit the sack at 10:30.
You know what? From that point on, all my work was done by 10:30. It was the damndest thing. I didn’t feel like I was rushing or working harder than I had before. It just… got done. It was as if I was subconsciously just doing things more efficiently, planning things better.
I wish I could remember that guy’s name, because it was probably the most eye-opening lesson I’ve ever learned: any task will tend to use all the time you allot to it. If you allow your work to take an unlimited amount of time, it will never be done. I have applied this truism to my life ever since, and without fail it is true. Whenever I talk with people who complain thattheir work is never done, I give them this advice, and those who follow it report amazing results. This was especially true in university. People who reported that they never seemed to be able to study enough were simply not limiting their study time. When they limited it (not to unreasonably tiny amounts, mind you) their study time suddenly became effective.
To relate this back to the thread’s general topic, a corollary to this rule is that if you ask your employees to work many extra hours, you will very likely get no additional productivity, or you will get very little. If your employees’ jobs are task-based (Some jobs, like manufacturing jobs, have to be time-based by their nature) then judging them by the amount of time they work, and making them work a lot of extra time, is usually a foolish enterprise.
Are you really having this much trouble comprehending the basic rule that businesses must rely on customers for income, and that without said customers the business folds and the employees are out of work? That the top priority for any business should be keeping the customers one has and developing new ones?
What bothered me to begin with in the OP was the title and the obvious resentment of the #&$**! customer. It’s an embarassing, immature and self-destructive attitude, and I have seen no evidence that it bothers you in the slightest.
Good, that’s one selling point for your side. Now all you need to do is demonstrate that someone is concentrating hard on the needs of customers in your own time zone, rather than sniggering about not having to kiss the customer’s ass any more. :rolleyes: