[thelist] losing irritated / arrogant customers off my books

[Alex Beston]

List

hmm. okay, thanks for all the enquiries, all very good & helpful &
useful to apply to a client worth keeping. Cant respond to all of them
but I will reply to this one as it came in at the end and has the
biggest punch.

> A client is paying you for a service and when something isn't working, even if it's >outside your control, they want reassurance that:
> a) you acknowledge that this is a problem that's affecting them

Yes, that would be the human thing to do. What I actually said was

(((I dont think my customer service is as bad as is implied by a
couple of replies in this thread, tho' I still need to be reminded of
keeping good practise[0]))):

"unless this is a problem my end the occurences of problems are becoming too
frequent for my liking and it is actually begining to piss me off."

(Yes I know i have just breached the client confidentially thing but I
am *starting* not to care)

"Tell me what I can do to make things better - I hope you understand
that the break in xxxxx is not something I can control.

However, things like email attachments too big for what its intended
to do are with my control.

Perhaps I can increase the size of the allowed attachment?

I would advise strongly against this tho.

Its currently set to 8meg.

If you have larger its really best to use your email client and not
webmail, or best of all ftp to your webspace and let your client
download direct from the webspace - thats what its there for after
all.

So tell me how you feel about the situation and I will try my best to
accommodate

best regards  etc"

and I received no reply.

> b) you are trying to find out what the cause of the issue is, and when you expect that they'll be able to get back to work.

Yes, keep them informed.

> This is all about "setting/managing expectations" of the client, and it's a must-have skill you want to do work for other people, especially in the consulting/services business.

well indeed or most places in fact, but why, because I have been given
some money, should I allow a situation to continue were it seems like
I am literally being treated like a doormat? My expectations are quite
high it seems, so are theirs. Maybe my expectation is not to do
anything for the money perhaps.

But 75 quid for all this hassle? jeez....

Thanks for all the help, continue the thread if you like but I really
still havent been convinced :

Perhaps I ought to spell out what I mean -

*** Why should I keep someone on who is clearly unappreciative,
milking it and resents imperfection? Why must I have to get money off
of people who do not understand what the Internet is[1], have no
notion what they are involved in (hey! its like iteractive TV!) and
expect me to roll over and take it each time their massive load fails
to go through and refuse to try the alternatives I suggest?

Its such a bad way to make money and I am fed up.

My desire to service this ungrateful user is fading to zero.***

Because thats what being a professional is?

/zzzz

Alex

[0] is it practise or practice? I can never remember the difference.

[1] ie an imperfect but highly fault tolerant network etc - downtime
is impossible to avoid