In Which I Walk Into a Buzzsaw
May. 29th, 2003 08:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lawnrrdI was sent off to visit a client yesterday. While I was getting ready to go, my wife suffered a computational crisis, so I was late. While driving, I got lost twice. I should have known things would not improve.
The purpose of the visit was to install the desktop version of our software and to make sure it worked with the client's document management system. I don't usually do that; my billing rates start at $150/hour, so it doesn't often make sense to pay me to do simple installs of $500 off-the-shelf software. I was told that this was a pre-sales visit, so I figured I was asked to go as a courtesy to the client, to hold appropriate hands during installation, and to discuss future possibilities for integration.
I found out while there that the previous simple installation of our off-the-shelf software had been extemely difficult because we had problems with the customer's other systems. This time, the software almost worked: so far it does everything properly, except it crashes when you quit. Fatal errors scare users, so this is bad.
The client was angry, because he has been trying to deploy this for months. When he found out that I had brought beta software (because that's all we have at this point), he became livid, insisting that he had been promised release-quality software.
During a flurry of phone calls after lunch, my manager asked me why I had beta software, since he thought we were past the commercial release date. The developers then told me that we were still in beta, and that we didn't yet have beta sites for the new feature that was having the problem. The sales guy swore up and down that he had made clear to the client that he was getting beta software (and I'm inclined to believe him). And none of this helps me as I stand in front of the client, who's frothing at the mouth.
Today, I get to drive back to the client to help fix problems that are the client's fault, but these are relatively minor problems. Fixing them will not significantly placate this client.
And so it goes.
The purpose of the visit was to install the desktop version of our software and to make sure it worked with the client's document management system. I don't usually do that; my billing rates start at $150/hour, so it doesn't often make sense to pay me to do simple installs of $500 off-the-shelf software. I was told that this was a pre-sales visit, so I figured I was asked to go as a courtesy to the client, to hold appropriate hands during installation, and to discuss future possibilities for integration.
I found out while there that the previous simple installation of our off-the-shelf software had been extemely difficult because we had problems with the customer's other systems. This time, the software almost worked: so far it does everything properly, except it crashes when you quit. Fatal errors scare users, so this is bad.
The client was angry, because he has been trying to deploy this for months. When he found out that I had brought beta software (because that's all we have at this point), he became livid, insisting that he had been promised release-quality software.
During a flurry of phone calls after lunch, my manager asked me why I had beta software, since he thought we were past the commercial release date. The developers then told me that we were still in beta, and that we didn't yet have beta sites for the new feature that was having the problem. The sales guy swore up and down that he had made clear to the client that he was getting beta software (and I'm inclined to believe him). And none of this helps me as I stand in front of the client, who's frothing at the mouth.
Today, I get to drive back to the client to help fix problems that are the client's fault, but these are relatively minor problems. Fixing them will not significantly placate this client.
And so it goes.
