Procrastinators Suck

[Dips]

Another thread reminded me of these idiots:

When we getting our last release ready our distributor in France asked us to add some changes that would help French-speaking customers (and only French-speaking customers in France itself, not elsewhere. I can't really explain more than that, I'm sorry).

Mind you all this was taking place while we were going back and forth with dozens of groups, agencies and customers about other changes and new features we were adding to the product for the same release.

The SCs were very emphatic that these changes were important. At least in words. Their actions said the opposite...

Getting the specs from them was like pulling teeth.

After getting the specs getting them to test builds was like pulling teeth.

Then getting them to give us feedback was pulling teeth.

Then the feedback was. "It doesn't work as we expected."

Trying to get them to outline what they expected was like pulling teeth.

Then it was time to start the entire painful process over on the revisions.

Eventually we had to release the product because it had changes that were *essential* to all of our customers in North America. The population of which is much larger than the population of France. These customers needed the product and we kind of needed to sell it to them because we don't make money by NOT selling products.

So we told the SCs that the build we just sent to them was going into beta in two days. They had had it for months and hadn't done squat for testing it or letting us know if there were any issues.

Sure enough we got an email saying it didn't work as expected, nothing specific, of course.

Giving them ONE more chance, Roger, our chief of development asked them to please specify what wasn't working as expected and what they *were* expecting.

The guy must have stayed up all night because he typed up a 50 point email listing all the problems and flaws that needed to be fixed before the product could be released. Yeah. 50!

Roger just looked at that and laughed. Either they thought we could work miracles or they had delusions of their overall importance as customers. He was pretty sure that the needs of the many (and ourselves) outweighed the needs of the few and we'd just have to release without the changes the SCs wanted.

Still Roger didn't want to make the decision unilaterally so he brought the issue before a management meeting. I was there.

Not one person disagreed with Roger. So he carefully composed an email to the SCs letting them know how very sorry we were that it just wasn't going to be possible to include their proposed changes in the next release without pushing back the release date. We regretted it very much but the release date had been pushed back too far already and we just couldn't push it back any further. But, of course, with their cooperation we were very hopeful the changes *could* be included in the next service release. It was a masterpiece of diplomacy.

Nevertheless it went over like a lead balloon with the SCs. We got emails from every member of their board of governors cc'd to everyone at the our company and their agency.

Pretty much they all said the same things.

They were so disappointed in us. How could we treat such very important customers with such disdain? Didn't we understand how important their segment of the market was? It was just unacceptable and if they hadn't already invested so much time and money in working with us, they'd have someone else make a product that did what they wanted.

We just kind of ignored the drama-queen histrionics and mentally rolled our eyes at each email. They do this a lot and it loses its effect after a while.

And, eventually, we DID get their changes into the next release.

After a lot of agonizing tooth-pulling, of course. We would expect no less.

[Crossbow]

Dips, if it wasn't for your location, I'd swear we worked at the same company....

[Kristev]

Nitwits. How can your company repair the problems in your product if you aren't told what the problems are, and told precisely?

[Calud]

Yep, that pretty much sums up the French.

I think their national hobby is standing in your way. Doesn't matter if that's actually in the physical world, in a car or in the job department.

[Dips]

Yep, that pretty much sums up the French.

I really don't want to take it down that route. This customer doesn't suck because of their nationality. They'd suck just the same if they were from anyplace else.

I only mentioned the country to illustrate that the number of potential customers affected were small compared to the rest of the world which was being kept waiting by the agency.

The market there IS important to us and this customer is also important to us; we put up with it because we value the relationship. And we certainly wanted the changes in the product as much as they did.

So it was pretty frustrating to not be able to make the changes BECAUSE of them. Then to have the blame us for it was the icing on the suck sundae.

[Hyndis]

I get that a lot actually. Person just says "DOES NOT WORK" and provides absolutely no other information, and there is nothing I can get them to do to explain what the problem is.

Then when I tell them I am unable to help them without further information, they just go ballistic on me and go on and on about how we're apparently forsaking their entire market share and how they're part of such a huge demographic.



After dealing with this for the umpteenth time, I snapped. I finally did check on the actual size of the market demographic.

Its 0.5%.

I then informed the customer of this.

Never heard from him again!