Our friends over at Laridian have recently added a blog to their website. Laridian offers first-class bible software for Windows Mobile, Palm OS, iPod and BlackBerry devices — check out their new blog when you have a chance.
Good for the Customer vs Good for the Business
I’ve been running into more and more crazy corporate policies that might help the business in some fashion, but do nothing for the customer. In fact, a lot of these policies are downright bad for the customer and yet they still exist.
My personal theory is that if a policy is “Good for the Business” but “Bad for the Customer”, it isn’t actually good for the business at all! Read on!
*When I wrote this today I saw Kevin was getting ready to post and I was going to hold off until tomorrow. As it turns out we’re talking about the same basic topic (great minds think alike!) So I’m going to post it today anyhow as a complimentary piece!
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Retention? Nope.
Ilium Software is really happy to have customers, but not so happy to have them that we would do anything to keep them. On the surface, doing anything seems like ‘bending over backwards’ to satisfy the customer. That’s not a horrible idea – we really try to make people happy within reasonable limits and company policy.
When I say ‘do anything’, I include threatening, badgering, obsfucating, hard-selling, and otherwise retaining. The first – and quasi-official – thing that I want to get across is that we don’t have a retention policy or a manual. Ilium Software does not have a document that says how to retain customers when they say, “I don’t like [product], I want a refund.”
For more examples and some ranting, keep reading.
Form & Function: A Developer’s Perspective
How important is appearance? Is it a vital part of any application design? Or just a nice thing to add if you have time for it?
There have been a couple of great posts about this subject today. One of them is at Just Another Mobile Monday and another at Treonauts. Both of these address the subject from the point of view of a user. I thought I’d take a second to discuss it from the developer end.
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Common sense is neither common nor sensical. Discuss!
One of my little Google Homepage widgets is for a blog by one James Bach, who knows more about testing than me. A lot more. He recently blogged about his dislike for the words ‘intuition’ and ‘common sense’ being used as explanations in arguments.
Bach has a very good point when it comes to using those two concepts as ways to explain away a problem.
The article also made me think about how often I run into issues of common sense or intuition while providing tech support. Keep reading for some examples, and a little discussion on how I think the common sense and intuition pitfalls can be avoided.
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What is RSS? Here’s a short answer.
One thing I’ve noticed in terms of support is that people usually come to us wanting to make lists (ListPro), keep track of passwords and such (eWallet), keep track of financial transactions (Keep Track), but when it comes to NewsBreak, it’s a bit up in the air. It lets you… read news! Specifically, it’s an RSS feed aggregator, and if you know what RSS is, you understand the concept immediately.
If you don’t know what RSS is, wrapping your head around just what NewsBreak is good for, can do, can’t do, etc. can be a little tricky. If you don’t know what RSS is, this article will probably help: A non-technical explanation of RSS.