Let me tell you a story. An all too common story. And how it will make your coworkers hate you and your entire staff. Yes, your failure to correct this type of behavior is exactly why everyone else hates you and all of your account execs, inside sales reps, sales operations, and everybody else whoContinue reading “You, EVP Sales! Don't let your AEs get away with this”
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Don’t Upgrade on Nights, Weekends, or Holidays
This should be self-explanatory to anybody who’s been in operations for any length of time. But for you folks who are new to this whole “production” thing, for those of you into the devops concepts but not so much the devops reality, here’s a clue. Most organizations are not prepared for upgrades. Especially not whenContinue reading “Don’t Upgrade on Nights, Weekends, or Holidays”
“Still waiting to hear back from you”
I knew something was horribly broken when I read this email to a friend’s support site: “This is my third email today asking for help from you. I want to delete my account so I can make a new account, and reuse the same email address I always do.” First, why is it so hardContinue reading ““Still waiting to hear back from you””
A Modest Proposal
Before you contact tech support with that gnarly problem involving a simple problem that is easily solved by searching the vendor’s knowledge base, my best advice is this: READ. THE. FUCKING. MANUAL. I know. I know, little one. Reading is so very, very hard, what with the vast resources of the interwebs a single clickContinue reading “A Modest Proposal”
My parent says no, so I’ll ask the other one
Lots of customers have done it. You didn’t get the answer you wanted from your vendor’s support organization. So you ask again, in a slightly different way. You still don’t get the answer you wanted — oh, they answered you, and said no, just like they did the first time, and maybe tried to sellContinue reading “My parent says no, so I’ll ask the other one”
Why Coffee?
Why am I on coffee? I’m in tech support, I’ve been on call for 12 of the last 14 days, and I’ve gotten a max of 4h of uninterrupted sleep for that duration. And about four pages a day, all for production outages at customer sites. For all of you who wonder why your techContinue reading “Why Coffee?”
Use the Force, Luser!
Have you ever spent hours, days, or months building processes, procedures, programs, facilities, information, web pages, wiki pages, and metadata for your team, so you’d have the proverbial 360 degree view of something, like account data? You know that phrase, read the fucking manual? You know why that’s such a cliche? Because anyone who’s everContinue reading “Use the Force, Luser!”
Competing with Yourself
I’m not quite sure why some cluster of mid-2010’s businesses thought it would be a good idea to give away everything they ever wrote for free, and try to sell a paid version of the very same software. I mean, what kind of magical thinking is that? Why would any reasonable person or, you know,Continue reading “Competing with Yourself”
Stupid Sales Tricks
I got a trouble ticket the other day, requesting I send something off to person X instead of person Y. Fairly normal type stuff, yes? It turned out that the underlying request was to provide a key that enabled a software feature for a customer deal. Still fairly normal stuff, yes? The customer in thisContinue reading “Stupid Sales Tricks”
I am full of coffee. And Fury.
Have you ever called in to tech support (OK, Boomer) or sent a tweet, and felt betrayed because you didn’t get a response in, like, five seconds? Yeah. You are the reason I am filled with fury. You are using a free account, or maybe a US$5 per month account. And you are outraged! OContinue reading “I am full of coffee. And Fury.”
Coffee and Fury 