But then Jack doesn’t get to bitch about the “happy happy” mentality that sticks in his craw so badly.
I want my best friend
to be ha ha ha happy
but not happier than me
once again now
but not happier than me.
Proteus in Two Gentlemen of Verona (musical version).
A happy workforce is lovely - just as long as it’s not happier than me (the customer).
“Be happy in your work.” - Colonel Saito (Bridge on the River Kwai).
Have a happy weekend. 
It was so obvious that I missed it. I saw, instead, a post that questioned management policies towards the customer. I guess we each bring our own baggage to the table.
Work tends to fill the volume of the container you put it in. I see it in consulting all the time. A project “needs” to get done. The team stays late. 7pm they order dinner. That wastes an hour or two. Around midnight people are just spinning their wheels until 4am. They show up at noon the next day wasting half of it. Most of the time, you’re better off just leaving at a reasonible hour and coming in early the next day.
I assure you that all the dot bombs had business plans that included all this stuff. In fact many of them kept the customers very happy by providing products and content well beyond what they asked customers to pay for. They way overestimated the size of their markets, and didn’t have a realistic path to profitability, but that’s a lot different from ignoring customers.
As I said before, you are reacting to the title, not the content, of the OP. Would you still think Bob is wrong if, as I suspect, he is favoring giving customers 90% of their specs at high quality rathern than 100% with low quality?
If you think giving customers crap on schedule is customer service, I sure as hell wouldn’t want you to work for me.
I would love to read this paper. Could you possibly provide a link, or if it’s not available online, a title and author or something?
To respond directly to the thread’s questions: I think credit card companties, and to a lesser degree, banks, have a business model that arguably involves a model that is predatory in its attitude toward customers.
To respond directly to the thread’s questions: I think credit card companties, and to a lesser degree, banks, have a business model that arguably involves a model that is predatory in its attitude toward customers, which is waaaaaay past ass-kissing.
I’m sure Jack will reply that only 100% at high quality is acceptable. Because that’s all-or-nothing, black-and-white, hard-ass thinking.
And not to put thoughts in anyone’s head of course, but his real point may be this: a hard-ass customer demands hard-ass thinking when he is putting down the dough. Anything else detracts from value-for-money from him, whether or not it meets his needs well.
They strategy of targeting college students and other high-risk customers is predatory. If you fit the profile of the type of customer they like, they can be very accomodating.
Stupid, inexerienced management believes in “the customer is always right”. The customer wants a million features instantaneously and they don’t want to pay a cent.
Hard-ass thinking from the customer’s side or the supplier’s side? I’d favor both.
Hard-ass thinking on the customer side involves both really knowing what you want, how important it is, and some understanding of the cost of supplying it to you. One place I worked, my boss, who knew nothing about software development, was insistent on having some trivial bugs fixed for internal tools, supplied to us by an internal group. There were easy workarounds, and I, as a former developer, could tell the large amount of effort required to fix these. I wanted the group to spend their resources on their next release, which contained important functionality. By boss, much in the Jack mode, thought I was way too easy on the internal group - one of the many reasons I left that place in a hurry.
I’ve done demo suite presentations of software at large shows. You always get potential customers with off the wall ideas. The standard response is “interesting idea, we’ll consider it.” (For about a picosecond 
)
I’ve been on the other end of this also - but it doesn’t bother me if my idea goes low in the queue. Companies have to optimize satisfaction of a broad range of customers to be profitable, not try to meet 100% of the needs of each one.
That sounds like one nasty code in your dose.
Regardless, you need to stop deploying platoons of straw men to make your points. Nowhere have I said that employees should be abused by poor management practices, only that turning one’s ire on the customer is not the way to go.
Except for a perhaps over the top thread title, no one has spilled any ire on any customers in this thread. Stupid bosses, maybe, customers, no.
OP here, sorry but I’ve had a lot of family stuff to contend with.
jackmannii - you misread my resentment. It was directed at management who make ridiculous promises that “others” have to keep (without any consultation with thise others to see if the promises are keepable). I use the expression “kissing ass” to describe the automatic reaction to adversity by making more promises instead of sitting sown withthe customer (as equals) and trying to come to reasonable, doable solutions.
If my current company would change its managerial bonus system to be customer satisfaction based instead of “meeting the schedule” based (the two are not synonymous), I think things would be much better for all including the customers.
Voyager hit the nail with mentioning the “bad requirements” gathering. My former company were experts at getting solid requirements out of the customer; I can’t remember the last time they had a “but that’s not what I really wanted” moment.
Fine - given that clarification I’ve no interest in defending Dilbertian management practices.
You are mistaken, given the remarks in this thread about “bullying” customers and placing customers into classes based on how virtuous/deserving they are.
I had to get back to my office to find the issue with my column where I have the reference.
There are two places it has appeared. The paper is K.G. Cooper - “The $2,000 Hour: How Managers Influence Project Performance Through the Rework Cycle.” It was reprinted in IEEE Engineering Management Review, Winter 1994, Vol. 22, No. 4, pp 12-23, and originally appeared in Project Management Journal 25(1), 11-24., 1993. A quick Google showed references to it, but not the paper itself.
Umm - like frequent flier programs? There was an article in the Times a while ago about how customer service reps for cellphone companies get information on how profitable the caller is, and can give perks accordingly. Do you object to such programs?
I object to having my positions and the statements made in this thread mischaracterized, followed by attempts to change the subject.
Thank you. Thankyouverymuch.
Sorry to offend, but I thought that affinity programs were exactlu ways to put customers in classes depending on how “deserving” they were. Frequent fliers and fliers from companies with big contracts (I don’t know this for a fact but I expect it) get good seats - random fliers get middle seats. Or did you mean something else?