Go ahead, be rude. It will cost you $350k
theregister.com
theregister.com
IBM banned from QLD. 10 years in and there's still no IBM contract within the state government that I'm aware of.
https://www.itnews.com.au/news/queenslands-ibm-ban-lives-on-...
"I would like to think it cost him at least a few of his racing yachts." - because the CEO/Director of a massive multinational conglomerate with 100 000 employees didn't arbitrarily have time for you?
Also - and this may have nothing to do with your experience - but for some reason some people feel as though they have the 'right' to other people's attention. The more influence people have the more people come out of the woods with this.
I do not envy anyone with an iota of influence or popularity, it's a constant stream of people demanding their focus, any one of which may or may not interpret something some way, or even take an actual real slight out of proportion. Also I find that people are bad at interpreting the state of mind of others.
Of course it's probably a good thing to move away from Oracle anyhow ...
I don't blame them for developing a dislike for Oracle after an Oracle representative mistreated them. Their whole purpose in being there was to put face time in with past and future customers and engender positive connections and they failed.
It may be the case that some of us can choose whether or not to be offended in any kind of circumstance, but that doesn’t prove everybody can, just like many people not simply being able to think themselves out of major clinical depression. It would be strange to blame them for this.
Edit: grammar
1. Your feelings typically say more about yourself than about another person. Use them for self reflection.
2. Feeling wronged when someone is an asshole is just. Learn to create boundaries and find ways to separate yourself from such people, both physically and emotionally.
3. Very few things are made better by being obsessively angry. Learn what is causing your anger, work through it and confront people you want to keep a relationship with.
Most of all, try to always give others the benefit of the doubt, and if they ask forgiveness grant it. If they prove themselves repeatedly unreliable than form the appropriate boundaries, but still treat them with the respect that any person deserves.
"When someone hurts you, be hurt."
This is not the way. Instead, be tough and say, nothing can hurt me.[1]
[1] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/stick...
I've never seen taking offense the same way since hearing that.
Your comment is a loaded straw man, and you've confused being offensive and taking offense as a single event when it is two separate and distinct events. I never said anything about fault. I only referred to responsibility. Ultimately, we are each responsible for our own actions. Taking offense is an action. Even if an individual's emotional response is involuntary, that individual alone is responsible for their emotion.
I can tell you that being thin-skinned is just as much a symptom of mental illness as being offensive, and they usually go hand-in-hand: the most offensive individuals are usually also the most overly sensitive individuals.
Why would you think that? If I, entirely by my own choice, take offense then I've only hurt myself. Hurting yourself should always be far less bad than hurting someone else.
I get where you’re coming from, and in most cases there is a large amount of truth to this. But your statement, as absolutely as you have expressed it, is a bold claim and needs more backing up.
If people could simply choose to be free of sadness, depression, or anxiety, we would - we’d all just decide to be happy all the time. We have more agency over our feelings than we think, but still only some.
Perhaps you were making your statement with people of privilege in mind. People of privilege walk around with fewer open wounds, retain an accordingly larger capacity for resilience, and are much more able to take your advice to heart. However, it is also good of them to be mindful of their conduct for the sake of those who aren’t in that position.
The whole point of inviting people to such an event is to make them feel that the CEO does have time for them. Why else would he even be there?
The other thing that sticks out is that the support must normally have an idea what client they are talking to, it's not like the company would order 350 laptops one by one on different names. A $350k client tries to get a replacement for a $50 part? Better hold your ground!
The story sounds like a fiction or a wet dream, but given how easy it is to underestimate the extent of idiocy, I'd say it's really hard to tell for sure. If the story is real, the vendor totally had it coming.
Could totally see that if look up support purely by SKU and serial without thing it into rest of CRM. Hmm.
At a startup I worked, the only thing that kept "is this important" in mind was a rough list of importance in eng managers' heads. Definitely led to us misprioritizing customers.
When I parrot this phrase to most people today they tell me the opposite is true, that any customer who isn't satisfied is an asshole and is doing you a favor if they switch to the competition.
I remember reading a business book in the early 2000s that said as much and that you should be trying to fire your worst customers. Around that time my stockbroker fired me as a customer because I didn't trade enough and because when they invited me to a presentation on annuities I asked why I shouldn't buy I bonds from Treasury Direct.
My reply to that is that there's a fine line between getting rid of your worst customers and getting rid of all your customers and it strikes me as another demented example of wishful hinking in "business as usual" like Best Buy's decision to stock a single Sony mirrorless camera body but not stock a selection of lenses to use with it.
In many businesses this is hard to account for, but we can do this now. Hence AWS charging a premium for proper support.
The interesting part of "the customer is always right" is that it moves one from the "this customer is idiot" default to the "what is this complaint telling me" and the notion that LTV isn't apparent at single interactions. So you optimize the marginal COGS down (including support, if necessary) using this as your bellwether, and try to keep in mind that LTV can be much higher than single support case cost.
But if you use "customer is always right" to increase COGS and still leave LTV same you're making a mistake because you're conforming to the phrase over the function it has.
That doesn't mean the customer gets to mistreat or assault your employees over the proximity of pickles to their hamburger patty when it was being cooked, but that if enough customers ask for more meat on their burger then you should offer a double or triple patty option.
Notably it does not mean that individual customers (or would-bes) are always justified in their complaints.
Better to just wait a few years until that probably outsourced support department has been dumped before you try again.
This story could be true, but it smells so much like fabrication.
When you finally reach the person in charge: - "sorry sir, but your request has been filtered by our revenue, cost and risk model, the model is automatic and I am unable to override it, would you please try making the request in another way" - "my request is totally legit, why does the model think it's risky?" - "sorry sir, the exact mechanism is confidential. I would recommend you proposing a solution that doesn't have substantial cost for us, or we can work together on this case for a win-win solution".