Proof that the real short circuits happen in customer communication.
People are funny. The older I get, the greater the source of amusement they become. No sense letting silliness make one angry in older age. Be entertained: laugh, forgive, move on and enjoy the ride. Savor the irony life and one’s chosen profession present.
One customer does not like to address us by our proper names. Every email from him begins with this antiseptic salutation:
“Hello—”
Surely appropriate for first contact: very polite and deferential. Less so for the 66th. We’ve been doing business with him now for three months. You’d think after 90 days of frequent, highly technical contact and growing familiarity, the scales would drop, self-confidence would build and comfort in communication would come naturally.
Not a chance. Detached Heartland Earnestness in May, just as in March. Like a permanent arranged marriage pre-ceremony: no intimacy. Once more, three months later, without feeling:
“Hello—”
No eye contact, keyboard version.
Maybe he was browbeaten as a child for speaking out of turn. Scars linger, discouraging initiative.
Maybe he was always the last player selected and exiled to right field. Or the last kid picked from among the wallflowers to dance at the high school mixer. Or the kid who walked home alone daily from the school bus stop. In the rain. Uphill. With a headwind. More scars.
One senses averted eyeballs and a self-esteem deficit. Our eyeballs do barrel rolls.
But he’s a customer, roadkill attributes notwithstanding. Cherished customers come in all shapes, sizes and dispositions. This one seems to like our work. He wants to send us more. So, we shelve annoyance, accept the idiosyncrasies, the passivity, the inarticulateness and carry on. Eccentrics pay our light bill. Especially the repeat kind. And you never know when one of them might blossom into a billionaire and shuttle us along for the ride. Snark is confined to Happy Hour.
Then there are the assertive (confrontational), eyeballs-popping-from-skull types. Steve Ballmer clones. The ones who demand a Teams (never Zoom) meeting whenever they don’t get the email answer they want (“There’s been a misunderstanding … by you!”), NOW! Who feel the need to explain everything in terms of existential imperatives. Who begin most sentences with a demand (“You will …”) rather than a question (“Can you … ?”). Since almost all meetings are virtual, and many participants darken their screens (why is this?), the fertile imagination is free to roam while such giants roam the Earth. To Easter Island, to images of soulless, inattentive, lantern-jawed, stone-faced intimidators who work their will by screaming. Who believe teamwork happens when the team does what they want. Intensely.
Just the sort for a long, collaborative business relationship.
Like the guy who instructed his buyer to place his order with us in September for flying probe testing scheduled for November. The buyer neglected to give us any of the essential materials needed to create a flying probe program (critically, usable CAD) until November. This was pointed out in our quote – we always inventory all relevant materials received at the quoting stage – but ignored for six weeks. Several courtesy email reminders of missing CAD were likewise shot into the ether, with no returning sound but the chirping of crickets.
Then the boards arrived for test. And we had to remind our hyper-caffeinated customer, faced with VC pressures to accelerate a product launch, that we had yet to start. Not good words for an aspiring billionaire.
Pandemonium.
An accounting was demanded.
On Teams, principal customer representatives maintained darkened screens to maximize the medieval confessional star chamber effect.
We were neither impressed nor amused by the dramatic effect. Told them to read our quote. Unsurprisingly, this made them angry.
It is possible to hear tables being pounded through darkened screens.
Explaining oneself to a blackened screen, behind which sit participants at an ADHD festival, while maintaining one’s equanimity, can be challenging. Sentences are interrupted mid-vowel. Justifications go incomplete. Nothing is accepted at face value; no attempt to explain lead time is accepted. The adjective “inexcusable” is heard from multiple hidden voices, in a condemnatory tone of voice. Eventually, we abandon the attempt at dialogue and try silence, reason having failed. The meeting abruptly ends.
The next morning, we email the customer a recap of our discussion, summarizing meticulously the what, where, how and why. We explain that now (finally, after six weeks!) we have received workable CAD files, their project has our undivided and immediate attention, is aligned first in the programming queue and, henceforth, we will provide daily updates of our progress until completion. The customer, deflated by one night’s introspection, replies plaintively by email, thanking us for our efforts, promises to do a better job in the future at getting us the necessary files and requests immediate return of two boards from the test lot to make a shipment (test waived), leaving one board with us for program debug. No apologies for yesterday’s excoriation, but their measured response suggests regret. The source of their predicament finally occurred to them, perhaps while gazing directly into a mirror.
So, they launched their product with untested boards because they didn’t properly account for missing materials and testing time, hoping to cover their deficiencies with bluster and bullying. Nope. Caveat emptor on the new product. And test is once again an impediment to riches.
Another customer was anxious. He brought to us a new account; a famous – or maybe notorious – OEM as his new prized customer. He quoted them, and us, six months ago, and despite his best efforts, still got the order, including our flying probe testing. Sometimes low-balling actually works. Now what?
He wanted to look good to the new customer. What to do?
Lean on the supplier.
Relentlessly.
Can you do it faster? Can you do it cheaper? Three phone calls and three emails in three hours to three different colleagues, all with the same message to improve his odds that one would commit and the other two would be forced to adhere.
One shortcoming with his scheme: the three colleagues compare notes before responding.
Score one for experience.
So, he got the same answer three different times.
We’re happy you got the order. No, we will not offer you a discount (your price has already been discounted). Yes, we will do our best to complete your order as soon as possible, but it’s a complex, difficult board, and program debug will take a while. That’s why our quote contains a lead time, like every other quote we issue. If you haven’t read our quote in detail, now might be a good occasion to do so. We will update you again in a few days. Click.
Conclude Act 1.
Not to be deterred, the following morning, our Hero resumed his onslaught. Same litany: cheaper, faster, etc.
As if we forgot.
Remarkably, our three answers remained the same as the day before. Solidarity forever.
Conclude Act 2.
Day 3. The guy begging for discounts showed up with boards to be tested. In a Tesla.
Bad form when pleading for relief.
“Is the program ready?”
We just got your schematic (which you neglected to provide at the quoting stage six months ago, as our quote clearly stated). Nice try.
Conclude Act 3.
The situation bears the hallmarks of someone making a delivery commitment without consulting the test engineering firm – us, the guys at the end of the supply chain train – first. Not wise. And assuming we would bend to his will. Also, a bad assumption. This customer hasn’t darkened our door in years, using us only when a sufficiently better and cheaper alternative is not to be found. We know. So, we leave him to sweat and endure gastrointestinal distress and get to work. Ruminating about a crisis of his own making. He’s in the queue.
Here we go. Brace for daily calls. Assume combat stations, with a touchpoint for communications in and out (two colleagues will direct all queries to the third, providing one unimpeachable, unmanipulable point of contact).
Strike another blow in favor of experience.
The customer will be informed every step of the way. He’ll know where we stand, even if the news is less than he wants. Tums and Imodium not included. Exeunt omnes.
Finis.
Finally, there is the customer who ignores clearly defined deadlines, thinking his big company sets the rules and can tear them up at will. Like the medical customer who was told in December 2023 that a certain test system would be decommissioned at the end of 2024. Nearly 13 months’ notice. In writing. Multiple times.
Reader, it would have been a fine day had they acted on this information in a timely way.
But we exist in the real world. And it was not a fine day.
Which means panic attacked when our fifth notice in nine months finally sunk in.
“These guys are serious.”
We were begged to keep the system online for six additional months while the OEM sorted out its options and made its plan.
One-time extension of six months to 6/30/25. That’s it: no more.
An April email from a program manager at the OEM let slip that it was assumed the takedown date could be extended again. The program manager used words hinting that the decommissioning date was theirs to determine.
Silly program manager.
They received a prompt reply, reminding them that the decommissioning date of the old ICT system was ours to determine and that they’d best make haste to secure alternate testing arrangements (which we would be more than happy to provide). Just as we made clear nearly a year and a half prior.
A purchase order to convert the board in question to a new, operational test system came the following week.
Diversity lives on.
Robert Boguski is president of Datest Corp. (datest.com); This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. His column runs bimonthly.
