There are some lessons that sound trivial but need reinforcement as often as possible. Just the other day I overheard some peers telling stories about annoying customers and it irked me. They needed a reminder that you're in business to help and to please your customers.

Almost any job can make you hate your customer. They're the people that bother you on a daily basis. They have unreasonable demands. They don't understand your job, and expect you to cater to their needs, regardless of how inconvenient they may be.

Corporate Customers

In a corporate setting it's rampant to dislike the customer. At least in retail, the customer is generally a person with a handful of cash. You may not like them, but it's easy to see how a happy customer adds to your personal success. In a corporation, your immediate customer is often another employee who is forced to use your service whether or not it sucks. You may not even know anyone who has talked to a real, flesh-and-wallet customer of the company. For most people there's no obvious link between pleasing your customer and earning money.

In technical fields a poor attitude towards customers leads to all kinds of failures. We expect customers to adapt to technology instead of the other way around. We expect customers to learn our internal processes, instead of catering to their time and expectations. We drag them through hardware and software upgrades that require more effort than they're worth.

Learning From Jewelers

As an IT professional, I was pleasantly astounded by a jeweler who made me some custom pieces. I was led through a set of stages, including some with the very technical component of assessing gemstones from a third party. In all cases my time was respected, and the jeweler involved me in decision-making as a consultant should. The end result did not surprise or disappoint me in its cost, time, or quality.

When we had to make a technical decision that was out of my depth, she explained enough of the principles involved and put forward a reasoned recommendation based on her expertise, backed up with a few key points of rationale. I felt sufficiently involved despite not having the technical background to make the decision on my own. When decisions were insignificant, I wasn't even bothered with them.

More Similar Than Different

The jeweler is in the same situation as any technical professional: serving a non-technical customer with little understanding of the process, components, or challenges of the project. Any professional has a choice: either to resent the customer's ignorance, or to become a proper consultant and lead them to their goal.

Large IT projects are bigger and more complex, but the goal should be the same. The customer has a budget, an outcome they want, and a few key concerns. It shouldn't be any harder in IT to advise a customer, lead them through a process, and involve them appropriately. At the end, they should not be surprised by the cost, time, or quality of the result.